


(i don't need you to) Worry for Me

by Cygna_hime



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Child Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mild supernatural dysphoria, Physical Abuse, abuse recovery, rubbish teen parents, tw: Xehanort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 101,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygna_hime/pseuds/Cygna_hime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a fit of defiance and desperation, Vanitas disobeys his Master's orders and goes looking for the missing half of his heart. He finds it, and something else as well, something he never expected to find anywhere...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (i never said i was a) Victim of Circumstance

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the inestimable [cassandraoftroy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandraoftroy). Without you, my life is as a bottomless abyss made entirely of poor comma choices.
> 
> Fulsomest thanks also to [Starcrossedsky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Starcrossedsky), for being my sounding board and listening to me babble interminably.
> 
> Written for the KH Big Bang 2012.

The badlands were cold at night. The boy crouched in the shelter of a column of stone and tried once more to light a fire. The flame sparked from his fingertips readily enough, but without anything to burn it died before providing more than an instant of warmth. The boy snarled wordlessly at his failure.  
  
What did ( **the old man** – _show proper respect_ ) Master Xehanort want from him, anyway? He was tasked to stay here all night and ‘practice’, fine, but practice _what_? Freezing to death? Would it kill him to explain what he wanted out of the boy for a change? Apparently it would. _Not_ explaining it was doing a solid job of killing the boy, but somehow he doubted that was at the top of his Master’s priority list. If Master Xehanort had been interested in coddling his pupil’s weakness, he wouldn’t have – the boy tried not to think about it. Thinking about that day made him sick. He had enough problems right now without dealing with what happened when he got sick.  
  
Instead he went back to thinking about his Master. The ( **stupid terrifying monstrous** – _he’s not that bad, if he were that bad you’d be in trouble, and you’re fine, it’ll be fine_ ) old man couldn’t ever say a thing straight out. Oh, he’d blather on about his plans for hours, but actually instruct the boy? That was apparently beneath him. The boy would do it, would do whatever would get him back indoors where at least it was reasonably warm and out of the wind, if only ( **the horrible old man** – _don’t think about your master like that, you should be grateful to him –_ **for what** – _for taking you in at all_ ) his Master would tell him what to do!  
  
The boy felt his frustration getting away from him, taking on a life of its own. Before it could escape, he grabbed hold of it in his mind and used it to fuel another attempt at a fire. This one finally caught. The boy leaned closer, all but falling right into it.  
  
As he got warm for the first time in hours, his frustration vanished, and with it the fire. The boy swore and punched the ground. Why couldn’t he do this? It should be easy. Master Xehanort wouldn’t have set him out here if he couldn’t handle it ( **yes he would, he’d do anything** – _no, your Master knows what’s best_ ). He could handle it. He had to. He wouldn’t be a failure, not like –  
  
The sick feeling caught him too fast this time to avoid it. He doubled over on his knees, clutching his torso as though that would keep it all in, as though he could stop it. He was back there, here but back then, in the daylight that was worse than the darkness. The Heartless were all around – he didn’t want to fight – he did want to – he wanted to fight the wrong person – Master, please – why would you do this I’m not ready I don’t want to – I hate you I hate me I’m a failure I don’t want to succeed no no no I won’t do this for you I won’t – you can’t make me I’m scared you can’t make me survive – I’d rather die – I don’t want to die –  
  
Then he wasn’t him anymore. He was standing, but _he_ was on the ground, and for a moment he thought this was being dead, but he felt alive, just not right. Something was wrong inside. He didn’t know what he was.  
  
His Master told him.  
  
The boy uncurled himself slowly. He was back in the right time. It was dark and cold, and he hurt, but he didn’t feel sick anymore. He knew where he was again. He knew what had happened. Of course, that meant…  
  
He looked up, and they were there. He couldn’t see them in the dark, but he could feel them. A bunch of little angers were skittering around in the shadows, there were a pair of confusions rooting on the rock beneath him, and a little further out a huge fear was lurking.  
  
God, he hated them. He hated how he could feel them moving around like pieces of his own body. They shouldn’t be out there. They should be back in here with him where they belonged. He hated making them, hated the hollow they left, hated that he couldn’t stop them, hated his Master for making him this way, hated – the other boy, hated himself. He hated everything.  
  
His hatred unfurled itself toward the starry sky. It was enormous, bigger even than the fear. That one would be a pain to hunt down in the morning. If the boy was still there in the morning. He was starting to run out of reasons why he should be.  
  
He wasn’t going to fail ( **let that man beat him** – _disappoint him_ ), that was one. He wasn’t going to give the other boy the satisfaction of being the only one left. He was going to get stronger, so he could take back his body. If what it took was staying out here all night with nothing but his emotions for company, then so be it.  
  
If he got far enough away, he couldn’t feel them anymore. The boy slipped around the column away from his emotions and took off running, using the darkness to speed his steps and catch himself when his feet slipped on uneven bits of stone. As long as he was running he at least wasn’t cold.  
  
The darkness couldn’t help him, though, with things he ran right into, and the ground in the badlands didn’t make any sense. It turned up or down abruptly, from the spells used in the long-ago war his Master said, and sometimes there were spars of stone that jutted out without warning. The boy hit one such spar full tilt.  
  
He lay on the ground, trying to get his lungs to draw breath. When he could think again around the pain, he wondered if his ribs were broken and what he could do if they were. There was magic for healing, but he didn’t know any ( **holding back the most useful** – _pain makes you learn faster_ ) yet. All he knew was fire, and that barely. If he was there in the morning, Master Xehanort might heal him ( **if Master Xehanort came back** – _he wouldn’t leave_ – **everyone else does** – _not him you’re important to him_ ) if the boy did well. If, that was, he’d learned how to do whatever it was his Master had sent him out here for in the first place.  
  
He was no closer to finding his goal than he’d been at nightfall. And now there was a cluster of pains glittering in the night. The boy pushed himself carefully to his feet, trying not to feel the pain or if he did, not to care about it. He had to accomplish something.  
  
Feeling around the spar he had hit, he found that it was woven among others like it, like a tree or a huge ice crystal. He remembered climbing trees and laughing ( **happily** – _childishly_ ), and the ground beneath his feet felt wrong, too solid and not solid enough, like it would grab him and hold him down if he stayed there one second longer.  
  
Climbing in the dark was tense and awkward, but as he did his ribs hurt less, and he felt less. Finding the next grip, the next place for his feet, took too much of the boy’s mind for him to feel anything at all.  
  
He reached the top with a strange triumph in his chest, a savage elation that didn’t threaten to escape him at all. He reveled in it. Sooner or later, he would have to get down, but right then he didn’t care. It had taken him enough effort that even the night wind’s chill was for the moment pleasant. He grinned and looked up.  
  
Then he stopped grinning. He’d come up without thinking about the reason why he avoided the night sky. The stars scattered across the sky were looking back down. The boy hated them. They hurt, the way they rubbed his face – ha! – in what he wasn’t. The dark was indifferent, but the light ached.  
  
He shut his eyes on them.  
  
The worst part was that the boy could feel, out there, the star where _his_ light was. His light and his body were with the other boy, the boy he hated most of all. His Master ( **the terror** – _the wise man_ ) had taken them away to somewhere else. He said the boy wasn’t strong enough to take them back yet.  
  
The boy didn’t believe him. He felt strong, and more than that, he could feel his body and the other boy who lived in it. The other boy was weak. Weaker than he felt sometimes, when – the boy felt the sickness coming on again and jerked away from it. He didn’t want to think about those times. There wasn’t room up here for both him and his emotions.  
  
The cold wind stopped being pleasant. The boy sulked. Why should he stay here when he didn’t have to? He wanted his body back. Maybe if he went and got it early, his Master would be pleased. The boy knew this wasn’t true, but alone on the spire he decided to pretend otherwise.  
  
He would go where the other boy was, with the other Master that Master Xehanort sneered at, and the other students he had plans for. The boy could take his body back and pretend to be one of them, and then – when his Master chose – he could finish the plan from there. He could hide what he was; Master Xehanort said they were all fools. They wouldn’t notice a thing.  
  
It took him a long time to work out how his Master opened the dark ways. By the time he managed it, the stars were starting to hide behind the dawn creeping toward the horizon. Good, the boy thought. If the stars didn’t see him, they couldn’t tell.  
  
Maybe he would tell Master Xehanort where he’d gone. Maybe he wouldn’t. ( **If he was such a great Master, he’d know without being told** – _he’d be angry about you keeping secrets_ – **so what?** )

 

  


* * *

  
  
Aqua hated to get up early, but with Master Eraqus away dealing with Heartless down in the valley, someone had to make sure Ventus was fed and taken care of. She was already beginning to rethink her earlier certainty that she and Terra could handle everything necessary, and to regret her insistence, when Terra had offered to let her sleep, that they would do it together. She could still be dreaming, or working her way to full wakefulness at her own pace.  
  
Heartless in the valley, she reminded herself. That was a danger to everyone. That wasn’t the kind of thing Master Eraqus could ignore, no matter what else was going on. And she wasn’t going to be a slouch while he was gone.  
  
She met Terra in the corridor. Her fellow student was repellently awake and cheerful, and had been for some time, if the covered tray of food was any indication. It had probably taken him a few tries to make a good breakfast. Neither of them was any good at cooking.  
  
“Good morning,” he said.  
  
“Hrmf,” Aqua replied. “Morning,” she added grudgingly.  
  
“You can go back to sleep if you want. You were up late again,” said Terra, looking at her with concern.  
  
It was an extremely tempting prospect, but Aqua wasn’t going to give in so easily. She couldn’t get into a bad habit, anyway. Master Eraqus was only gone for a week, and when he came back, she would get up in the morning whether she liked it or not. “I’m fine. You just fell asleep early, again. Lazy.”  
  
Terra smiled. “Who’s lazy? You’re the one who doesn’t wake up before noon.”  
  
“Maybe if you went to bed after sunset, that would –”  
  
A clamor suddenly erupted from Ventus’s room. For a moment, Aqua thought he was awake at last, but it wasn’t the sound of someone waking, even from a nightmare. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was furious.  
  
She and Terra took off running at the same instant, the breakfast tray falling to the floor with a clatter as Terra pulled out his Keyblade. Aqua was a hair faster than her friend, so she was the one who flung the bedroom door open.  
  
“Let me in, you selfish _bastard_!” shouted the dark figure crouched over Ventus’s still form. Heartless? No – or if it was, it was like no Heartless Aqua had ever seen or heard of. There was darkness curling up from its body, though, and Ventus was glimmering with light. “You’re nothing without me, nothing! Let me _in_!” Its (his? The voice was male) claws scrabbled at Ventus’s chest.  
  
She’d been having problems with her aim in training, but when it mattered Aqua’s Blizzard spell hit precisely what she meant it to. It knocked the creature right off of Ventus and back toward the wall. The window was closed, Aqua noticed. It must have gotten here some other way.  
  
Terra moved in after her, trying to block it into a corner away from the bed, but it was too fast. It vaulted right past him to Ventus again, as if no one else mattered. It didn’t even try for the door, though Aqua swung it shut behind her anyway.  
  
“Get away from him!” Terra demanded.  
  
The creature didn’t listen. It went right back to crouching over Ventus and yelling at him, though of course there was no response. “Give it back! You’re not even using it! Why should _you_ get it if all you’re going to do is lie around and _sleep_! Give – it – ”  
  
It drew an arm back, and suddenly there was a Keyblade in what Aqua now recognized as a hand. The creature – it really looked human, or almost, if it only had a face – prepared to bring it down.  
  
“No!”  Aqua sent her best barrier to cover Ventus at the same time as Terra caught hold of the creature, wrestling it bodily away.  
  
Being pinned seemed to calm the creature down, strangely enough. Its Keyblade vanished, and rather than struggle against Terra’s grip, it turned its faceless head to look at the arms wrapped around its shoulders and torso like it had never seen such things before.  
  
“Aqua, is Ventus okay?” Terra asked, breathing hard.  
  
Aqua moved quickly to put her own body between Ventus and the creature, in case it escaped again. She checked the sleeping boy as best she could. There didn’t seem to be any real wounds on him, just a few pieces of ice from her spell, already starting to melt, and his shirt wrenched sideways and half-unzipped.  
  
When she looked closer, the exposed skin over his heart did have marks on it, but they weren’t bleeding (or worse). They were just small curved dents in the skin, five of them, like the marks of fingernails. Perhaps they were fingernails. What kind of monster had fingernails instead of claws?  
  
“He’s fine,” she said with a sigh of mixed relief and disappointment. Ventus was physically perfectly fine, but if whatever made him sleep so deeply wasn’t disturbed by this attack, she didn’t know how it could be disturbed.  
  
“What are you?” Aqua added, focusing on the creature Terra was still holding tightly. The creature, now he was holding still, looked more and more human, like a boy about the same size as Ventus. Strangely dressed, but human. Even the smooth black surface where a face should be looked like it might be a mask instead of part of his head.  
  
“Someone from the dark.” The voice sounded human, too.  
  
Terra gripped the creature – the boy? – tighter. “Who are you? What were you doing to Ventus?”  
  
He let out a snarl that brought Aqua’s Keyblade up into a guard position, though all he did was start to struggle, finally, kicking back against Terra’s legs and trying ineffectually to lunge forward. “ _I_ am Ventus! _He’s_ not!”  
  
Aqua blinked. That didn’t – it couldn’t – _what_? Meeting Terra’s eyes, she could see that her friend was just as confused. A madman? A madman with a Keyblade, with some kind of vendetta against Ventus of all people? That didn’t make sense, but he couldn’t be telling the truth, could he? And he didn’t sound like he was lying.  
  
The – boy, almost definitely – took advantage of Terra’s shock to twist out of his grip, but rather than flee or attack, he backed away and drew his Keyblade again. “What did you do?” he said, sounding more like a child than a monster. And angry child, but still a child. “I can’t get back in. _What did you do?!_ ”  
  
“What are you talking about?” They should probably just attack him. He admitted to being from the darkness, after all, and when Aqua focused her senses she could see it all over him, pure darkness such as the Heartless showed, with no light at all. But she didn’t attack, and neither did Terra. She wanted to know what she was doing. Master Eraqus would be disappointed if they didn’t think before acting.  
  
“We didn’t do anything to him. What did _you_ do?” Terra added to her question. He was leaning closer to the boy, getting ready to attack if he moved. Terra was always quicker to act against anything that sounded like darkness. It confused Aqua, sometimes, why he was the one who hated it more, when… But that wasn’t important right now.  
  
“I didn’t! You did! You must have! Undo what you did _right now_ , or I’ll make you.” It didn’t sound like an empty threat.  
  
From the way Terra set his feet, Aqua knew it was time to get to hers. She did, Keyblade out and ready for the assault she expected, as Terra said, “Leave Ventus alone!”  
  
“I can’t do that. I told you, I am Ventus. The real Ventus. That’s nothing, just a body that won’t admit it’s empty.”  
  
“That’s not true!” The words burst from Aqua’s throat before she thought about them. Ventus was lost and hurt, but he wasn’t empty. She knew there was still something inside, if they could only wake it up. This boy-creature that said it was Ventus was just lying to trick and confuse them, the way all beings of darkness did.  
  
“How do _you_ know?”  
  
She opened her mouth to reply, but she suddenly couldn’t find anything to say. She did know that Ventus was real, even if he was strange and hurt, but she couldn’t say how she knew. She just did.  
  
“That’s what I thought.” The boy-creature clearly took her silence as a confession. He edged closer to her – no, not to her, to the bed where Ventus was still lying as though nothing was happening around him. “What’s it to you, anyway? It’s none of your business, just mine and – it’s mine. Undo what you did and leave me _alone_.”  
  
On the last word, he lunged for the bed, ducking under the swing of Terra’s Keyblade. Aqua, however, was ready when he came: she caught his Keyblade on hers and flung him backwards with a sudden surge. She was pleased despite herself; she’d never been able to get that move to work before, but then, this was the first time she’d tried it on someone who didn’t outweigh her.  
  
“We didn’t do anything to him,” she repeated. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know why you’re acting like you’re Ventus, but he’s my friend, and I’m not going to let you hurt him.”  
  
Terra followed up on her attack, pinning the boy’s sword arm and holding him where he had fallen. The boy struggled, but if Aqua had enough strength in her shoulders to throw him back, Terra had enough strength and weight both to pin him down no matter how little he liked it.  
  
“You’re not friends!” the boy-creature snarled. “That – he doesn’t even know you. You don’t even know him. You don’t know anything at all! _Get away from my body_!”  
  
Aqua was about to give up on getting him to tell the truth and get rid of him, the way a Keyblade wielder should get rid of anyone who was so dark and threatening, when she heard a soft sound behind her. She turned to look.  
  
Ventus stirred, mumbling something that sounded vaguely discontented. He shifted, looking uncomfortable, but his eyes didn’t open. Aqua couldn’t help but notice that even though he didn’t look like he was conscious of what he was doing, every tiny movement ended up with him closer to the strange boy-creature.  
  
“Yes!” The boy-creature managed to get one arm free and reached out toward the bed, straining towards where Ventus’s hand now flopped over the side.  
  
Their fingertips met.  
  
Aqua wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The boy-creature had looked almost normal only an instant before: now there was pure darkness billowing out of him in thick black waves. It didn’t seem to be doing him much good; Terra was still holding him down easily. As for Ventus, he was glowing with a white light, faint compared to the darkness opposite but still bright enough that there was no way for Aqua to mistake it. It was like he was calling on power while still asleep, or like she was seeing his heart without trying.  
  
For a long, tense moment she couldn’t breathe. They were all waiting, it seemed to her, for something that would happen any second now…  
  
But it didn’t. Nothing happened, save that the dark boy dropped his outstretched arm with a snarl that sounded uncomfortably close to a sob. As soon as his hand slipped from Ventus’s, both light and darkness vanished.  
  
“What…was that?” Terra asked, voicing the question that was on both of their minds.  
  
The dark creature still had no face, but Aqua suspected that he was scowling up at Terra. “That’s your fault. I don’t care how you did it, just make it stop. Make him let me back in.”  
  
Terra was scowling back. “You’re a liar. You’re not part of Ventus.” That was the tone of voice he used when he really believed something else, deep down, Aqua knew. She let him talk and busied herself tucking Ventus back into bed, well out of reach. She didn’t want to see that again. His light was so faint.  
  
“How do you know? You never saw me before.”  
  
“Ventus isn’t dark like you.”  
  
“Not _now_ he isn’t, stupid. How do you _think_ you get something that’s just a shell wrapped around light?”  
  
“He’s not just a shell!” Aqua exclaimed, unable to silence herself. Ventus was hurt and sick, but he had the purest light she’d ever seen. Someone with a heart like that just had to be real.  
  
He started to laugh, and Aqua flinched. It wasn’t like real laughter, not like something shared with people. It was an attack all its own. The dark creature’s laughter jabbed at her, and she knew that he meant it to. “You’ve even gotten yourselves attached to it! There’s nothing in there but weakness, and you think that if you flutter around it enough, it’ll turn into a real boy! Well, too bad for you, there’s nothing in there I didn’t leave behind. Everything worth having is out here, and because of you I can’t get back where I _belong_!”  
  
“That’s not true!” Terra shouted, but Aqua spoke over him.  
  
“We didn’t do anything! If Ventus doesn’t want you back, it’s because you’re evil and rotten and – and full of darkness. He’s better off without you.”  
  
At least the creature stopped laughing, though he did start struggling again, thrashing back and forth and completely failing to dislodge Terra. “You’re lying! You have to be! _I’m the real one_!”  
  
No matter how evil he was, it was kind of sickening watching him cling so desperately to a lie. It was a lie. It had to be. Ventus was real. This was just a nameless, faceless creature of darkness that might be connected to Ventus but couldn’t _be_ Ventus. They should get rid of it and then ask Master Eraqus what it had been when he returned. That would be the proper thing to do, she was almost certain. This creature was trying to upset the balance, so it had to be destroyed.  
  
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. They didn’t know how it was connected to Ventus. What if destroying the creature hurt him somehow? Maybe they should wait. They were only students. The Master would know what to do. He could fix it.  
  
To be completely honest with herself, she just couldn’t do it. It was more than sickening watching him: it was sad. Nothing should be that desperate to hold on to a lie.  
  
While she was lost in thought, there was a sound from outside, a sound loud enough to echo through even the closed window. It sounded like there was something alive out there.  
  
There had been Heartless in the valley.  
  
Startled, Terra stopped trying to restrain the creature. It managed to squirm out from under him, but it didn’t attack. Instead, it looked up at the window with the rest of them.  
  
Terra was closest, not to mention tallest. He went to the window and looked down at the forecourt. Aqua saw him go pale and swallow before saying, “There’s some kind of monster down there. It’s – I don’t know what it is, but it’s huge.”  
  
Aqua suspected she was going pale herself. She wasn’t scared of a monster, but she’d only ever fought things as practice, with Master Eraqus there just in case. Now he wasn’t here, and if someone got hurt, it was for real. Besides, this wasn’t right. The castle should be safe from any kind of threat. It was their home, not a battlefield. How would a monster even get here?  
  
There was one obvious answer, but the dark creature was backed into a corner again rather than attacking anyone or trying to escape. That didn’t seem right to Aqua: if he was responsible for the monster, wouldn’t he have some kind of plan for what to do when it arrived?  
  
The monster roared below, and she felt a thump as it crashed into the castle wall. It would take a long time for anything to damage the castle, but they couldn’t just stand here and give it that time.  
  
Terra turned away from the window. He was still paler than normal, but otherwise he didn’t look as nervous as Aqua felt. “You stay here with them,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”  
  
“No!” She hated it when he tried to protect her from things. It didn’t happen often, which made it worse, almost. Aqua would rather he act foolish over little things than save it up for times when it might get him hurt. Someone did have to watch the creature in case he did something to Ventus, but Terra had been doing fine at that. He might as well keep doing it. “I’ll go; you stay and keep _him_ under control.”  
  
“That thing is too big for you to handle alone,” he said, illogically in Aqua’s opinion.  
  
“If it’s too big for me, then it’s too big for you. I won’t let it get close.”  
  
“If it does hit you, you’ll…get hurt. I can handle a few hits.”  
  
“Not as many as you think you can! Anyway, you should –”  
  
She was interrupted by the dark creature, oddly enough, who sighed audibly. “I’m not going anywhere. Both of you run along and save the day.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have to go anywhere to hurt Ventus,” Aqua pointed out.  
  
He sighed again. If he had a face, Aqua suspected that he was rolling his eyes. “I promise I won’t hurt him. I even promise I won’t unlock his heart. It probably wouldn’t work anyway.”  
  
She exchanged a look with Terra. It went against the grain to trust the word of something so self-avowedly dark, but what choice did they have? The monster wouldn’t wait forever, and it was better to be two together than one alone.  
  
Terra nodded; so did she. “Don’t leave this room,” she said as they shut the door behind them, as though that would deter someone with a Keyblade if he chose to break his word.  
  
The boy-creature’s voice drifted out after them. “Where would I go?”

 

  


* * *

  
  
The chimera would keep those two busy for a while. The boy considered opening the window to hear them better but decided against it. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t have advance warning anyway.  
  
He still felt sick. That had been a bad one. He’d been trying to keep things quiet – it wouldn’t do much for ( **his Master’s** – _their_ ) the plan if he got linked up to his emotions too quickly. He hadn’t meant to get sick, but then again, he never did. It just happened, no matter how hard he was trying to feed his feelings back into themselves so they couldn’t escape. He’d never held on this long before. And this one hadn’t been inside with him, so there was that, at least.  
  
He couldn’t even name all the emotions that had gone into the chimera. That didn’t happen often, only when he was too confused to even feel right. Now he felt completely hollow. Everything had drained out of him at once. There was nothing left.  
  
It would all be coming back soon enough, but worse. He was going to have to do something about that before the light students started taking pieces out of the chimera. The big ones hurt worse, and from the feel of it this was a record-breaker.  
  
He scowled down at his body. He’d been so close, so very close, and then it was like starting to step over a crack that suddenly widened into a gorge. There was something between them where there never should have been anything.  
  
Now that there was no one to stop him, he sat down right next to the body and took its hand again. It was the same as before: everything he was tried to pour over the point of contact, to get _home_ , only to be met by some kind of barrier he couldn’t cross. He leaned over, pressing forehead to forehead, heart to heart, hand to hand, and _willed_ himself forward, down, in. The rest of the universe didn’t matter. The boy tried to shut it all out. There was nothing else. Just him and his body.  
  
It wouldn’t go away. He could feel his heart beating. Both his hearts, the real one and the fake one he was stuck with, the one that didn’t work right. He could feel the warm weight of the blankets on him while he lay on top of them. He could even feel his own weight, the weight of the other body. But he couldn’t cross the last inch of distance to make them his own. There was something in between them, something that _wasn’t his_.  
  
He tried again anyway. He let go of his grip on his heart and forced it forward across the barren unfriendly land between. He was strong; he could survive the distance.  
  
He couldn’t. His hands and feet began to fade into curls of darkness, but there was nothing on the other side, no way for his heart to anchor itself, and the dark hung in the air where he left it. The boy let his heart snap back into the chest where it reminded the body what shape it ought to be. He was panting with ( **fear** – _cowardice_ ) exertion, and he still hadn’t gotten anywhere.  
  
It felt good, though, lying so close to where he belonged. Not good enough, never good enough, but when he was touching his body, his heart didn’t hurt anymore. The boy tried to focus on the place the pain wasn’t. It made it easier to think.  
  
What was he going to do? He couldn’t get back into his body, it seemed. Not without help. He would have to give up and go back to the badlands. He would have to tell Master Xehanort that the other students had seen him.  
  
The boy shuddered. His Master was going to be incredibly furious with him for this. He needed the boy, though, so he couldn’t be too bad. Or could he? The boy thought of the healing magic he had yet to learn. His Master could be very bad. He deserved it, of course he did, after failing and running off and endangering the plan and not trusting that Master Xehanort knew what was best, but that didn’t mean he was in a tearing hurry to be punished.  
  
It might be better to be punished than to have to stay so close to his real body without being able to get it back. The boy considered this. Actually, he thought it really wouldn’t be.  
  
He was decided, then. He would stay with his body as long as he could. They hadn’t killed him yet. He could get away from them if they tried. They really were weak, like the other boy had been.  
  
Outside, the chimera howled its death, and the boy choked on air. It hurt, it hurt sickeningly, and the surprise made it worse. He could feel the pain striking him and turning around to fly out again, and he scrambled to hold on to it. He couldn’t let it go. He had to keep them from finding out that he was making the emotions, or they really would kill him, and even if he escaped he would have ruined the whole plan. His Master would never ( **stop hurting** – _forgive_ ) stop punishing him for that.  
  
He couldn’t hold on to it. He never could. It was only being with his body that had made him try. In the end, with a furious convulsion of his will he sent it away, back to the badlands he’d come from. He would ( **let the old man handle it** – _do it yourself, weakling_ ) deal with it later. Maybe send it off somewhere else, somewhere it would be stronger than anything it met, somewhere no one could harm it.  
  
Sending the pain away to a completely different world hurt in a new and different way. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to do it at all. When it was gone, he felt hollow as usual, but of more than just pain, as though something else had seeped out alongside it. He felt dizzy without being sick, light and empty and, the boy realized, incredibly tired.  
  
He couldn’t fall asleep. The students were coming back. He had to talk to them. Didn’t he? He had to say something, for some reason, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He had to make them do what he wanted. What did he want? He wasn’t sure.  
  
Without a great deal of fuss, the boy slipped into unconsciousness.

 

  


* * *

  
  
Terra pushed himself up the stairs more quickly than he wanted to. His ribs ached, and a cut on his arm bled sluggishly, but he refused to let it slow him down. They’d left Ventus alone with that – whatever he really was – for too long already. So he kept going steadily up the stairs, even though all he wanted to do was sit down, just for a bit…  
  
Aqua’s shoes clicked on the stone beside him. He looked at her and had to smile. There was stone dust and dirt in her hair, and her shoulders were drooping with exhaustion, but at least she wasn’t hurt.  
  
And they’d defeated the monster. He still didn’t know what exactly it was: it didn’t look like any Heartless they’d studied, but what other kind of monster could it be? Perhaps when the Master returned, he could tell them. Master Eraqus could explain everything, Terra thought, his mind turning back to the bedroom and its occupants. It would all be less confusing if he were here.  
  
Until he got back, it was Terra’s job – and Aqua’s too, of course – to make sure nothing bad happened to Ventus, and they might already have failed. The stranger had been left alone there for too long. He tried to coax more strength out of his aching legs.  
  
“Terra!”  
  
He turned, surprised. He hadn’t noticed Aqua falling behind, but she was several yards back, leaning against the wall. Terra’s heart started beating faster again. “Aqua? Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine.” She shook her head with a smile. “Just tired. And I thought we should talk.”  
  
“What about?” He turned back to her and copied her attitude. Just standing still was restful after running after and away from the monster for so long.  
  
“About what to do next, with that boy, creature, whatever he is.”  
  
“I don’t want to leave him with Ventus,” he objected. Just the thought of what they might find this time was enough to frighten him. He tried to quash the fear. A true Keyblade wielder shouldn’t fear anything.  
  
“I know,” said Aqua. “Neither do I. But we have to decide now. What are we going to do with him if he’s still there?”  
  
He knew what he should answer. A monster from the darkness had to be gotten rid of, just like the one they’d fought in the forecourt. A monster that was obsessed with Ventus, that insisted it _was_ Ventus, was a threat too serious to ignore. There was no way of knowing what he might do, and Ventus was asleep, unable to protect himself. When he thought of the monster looming over Ventus, trying to pull his heart out or force himself in, Terra clenched his teeth in anger. If the monster hurt Ventus, Terra would – He caught himself and swallowed the rage. That was darkness. He should know better.  
  
But if it was darkness to want to hurt the monster, then did that mean it was the wrong thing to do? Terra missed Master Eraqus desperately. He would know what Terra should do.  
  
“We should…” he began.  
  
Aqua nodded. She looked as conflicted as he felt. “I know. Whatever else he is, he’s very dark. Did you see, when he touched Ventus?”  
  
“I saw.” It had been terrifying to see that much darkness, enough it seemed to overwhelm not just Ventus’s fragile light, but Aqua’s as well, if it turned her way. Terra couldn’t let that happen, no matter what he had to do. “He’s dangerous. And he wants to hurt Ventus.”  
  
“Does he?” Aqua asked. “I’m not sure. He didn’t sound like he _wanted_ to hurt anyone.”  
  
“Just like he didn’t care if they got hurt,” he replied.  
  
She said, “But he didn’t, did he? Hurt anyone, I mean. He was the one who really sounded hurt.”  
  
“That’s true.” Terra thought again of the body he’d held on to while it thrashed and kicked and tried to get to Aqua and Ventus. It had felt like a real body, like a boy the same size as Ventus. It hadn’t burned him to touch or had strange things twisting under its clothing. Even the darkness it gave off when the monster touched Ventus hadn’t hurt him, though that was probably because of Terra’s own darkness. He wished it had hurt. He wished the monster had kept attacking them with its Keyblade. He wished, almost, the monster had hurt them. Then maybe he wouldn’t keep remembering how small and fragile the monster had felt.  
  
“Aqua,” he said, looking down on the floor, “I don’t think I can…” It was stupid and weak and unbefitting, but the idea of attacking even a monster while it shouted and struggled to get away made him feel small and dead inside.  
  
“I know. Neither can I,” she said unexpectedly.  
  
“But then what do we do?” He felt like he could meet Aqua’s eyes again.  
  
She was chewing on her thumbnail, the way she always did when she was trying to think of the answer to a question. “I guess we go back up there and see if he’s gone,” she said. “And if he’s not, we find somewhere to keep him until the Master gets back.”  
  
At least that plan didn’t make him feel horrible just thinking about it. Besides, the Master would know better than they did what was the right thing to do. Terra said, “Where can we keep him?”  
  
“Maybe in one of the cellars?” Aqua shrugged. “I know it’s not a very good plan…”  
  
“No, it’s good. I like it.” He wasn’t sure whether he hoped the monster would be gone by the time they got up to the bedroom or not. As he levered himself back up off the wall, his ribs twinged and he winced more visibly than he meant to.  
  
Aqua caught it, of course. “But first, let me heal you the rest of the way.”  
  
“I’m fine,” he protested. Not that that would stop her.  
  
“You are not! I have the energy to cast again, and I’m not hurt.”  
  
She was tired, but Terra decided it was better to let her do what she wanted than to fight her on it and end up losing anyway. Then she would be even more tired. He wished he had her talent for healing magic. Then he could have healed himself. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t be sure a spell he tried to cast would do enough good to be worth the effort.  
  
It felt good, not being in pain. He even felt less tired, though he knew it was an illusion. He led the way up the rest of the stairs as quickly as Aqua could keep up with him. (It was also as quickly as he could go.)  
  
The bedroom door was still shut, not that that mattered. The monster hadn’t needed the door to be open to get in. Terra opened the door and stared.  
  
They were touching again. In fact, the monster was lying on top of Ventus and looking no less asleep, from what Terra could make out. Ventus was glowing in the same fragile way he had before, like he might stop at any point but miraculously never did. What was different was the monster. Before, he had been an entire nightmare of shadow; now, his darkness was pulsing as weakly as Ventus’s light.  
  
Aqua was the one who said what they were both thinking. “What _happened_?”  
  
Terra just shook his head. Nothing else seemed different at all. If the monster had done something, it was something he couldn’t see or sense.  
  
“We should move him,” he said. That was going to be easier than he’d thought. As long as the monster didn’t wake, they could put him somewhere safe without having to fight him. He approached the bed and rolled the monster off Ventus preparatory to picking him up.  
  
He and Aqua both gasped. They hadn’t noticed with the darkness obscuring detail, but the monster’s featureless head had changed. In place of what he now realized had only been a helmet all along, there was a boy’s face surrounded by a mass of spiky dark hair.  
  
“He looks like…Ventus,” Aqua said quietly.  
  
“Yeah.” If not for the hair, they could have been twins. Just two boys, asleep.  
  
Terra’s hands shook as he lifted the other boy more gently than he’d come into the room intending to. He thought of what they’d almost decided, what they’d almost come to do. The boy leaned unconsciously into the warmth of Terra’s body, just as Ventus had when he’d carried him up to this room not so very long ago. Terra thought about raising his Keyblade against this sleeping child.  
  
His eyes met Aqua’s over his burden. They didn’t have to say anything. They both knew that there was no more question of getting rid of the boy, no matter how dangerous he turned out to be when he woke up again. (If, Terra couldn’t help thinking, he woke up again. Ventus hadn’t.)  
  
“In another guest room?” Aqua suggested. There was another right next door.  
  
“That’s kind of close…” Terra said reluctantly. He didn’t like the idea of carrying the boy down all the stairs, nor of locking him in a cellar, but it was probably a bad idea to let him be so near Ventus. Whatever he’d been trying to do, whatever had knocked him out, he shouldn’t have a chance to do it again.  
  
“We can watch him.”  
  
They should do that anyway. At least the guest rooms had chairs. “Okay.”  
  
The boy settled easily enough onto the bed next door. Terra sighed as he stood and stretched this latest ache out of his shoulders. Across the room, Aqua finished bolting the window shut. It wasn’t likely to make much difference, but they both felt better if the room was as secure as they could make it.  
  
That left only one question. “I’ll watch him first,” they said at the same time.  
  
Terra chuckled. “You got your way last time,” he pointed out.  
  
“You’ve been hurt,” said Aqua. “You should be resting.”  
  
“I’m not hurt now. And you’re more tired, _and_ you didn’t eat breakfast.” As if to confirm Terra’s argument, Aqua’s stomach growled.  
  
She sighed and capitulated without much resistance for once. “Come get me in two hours, okay? Not more! You need rest too.”  
  
“I will.” He had no intention of doing anything of the kind. Sitting was enough rest for him.  
  
“Promise?”  
  
So much for that. “I promise.”  
  
She left, but her voice echoed in from the hallway. “I’ll clean up the breakfast tray, while I’m out here. No argument!”  
  
Since Terra had been the one to drop the tray, it should have been his job to clean it up, but he couldn’t bring himself to seriously argue the point. Instead, he settled down onto the floor and started stretching his complaining muscles before they cramped.

 

  


* * *

  
  
The boy woke slowly and resisted every step of the way. It was too pleasant a dream to want to leave, one of the dreams of the time before and a particularly nice one at that. He was warm and lying on something soft. Even in the dream, the hole in his heart hurt, but it didn’t hurt much, not enough by far to make the dream a bad one. He kept his eyes shut and snuggled deeper into the dream-bed.  
  
He couldn’t remember falling asleep.  
  
The boy’s eyes shot open as he sat up, pulse beating wildly, trying to place himself. He didn’t feel sick at all, so it hadn’t been that. He was – he looked around wildly – in a bedroom? Maybe he was still dreaming.  
  
No, he’d been with his body. The other Master’s students had caught him trying to take his body back, and then he’d been sick, and they’d left him alone, and then – his stomach rolled, but he caught it in time and tried to think dispassionately about what had happened. He’d tried his best, but he hadn’t been able to get his body to let him in. And then he’d sent the pain away so he wouldn’t get caught making it, and then he’d passed out.  
  
None of that explained why he was in a bedroom now, especially not a bedroom without his body in it. It didn’t explain why he’d woken up at all. The students really were ( **kind** \- _weak_ ) soft as well as stupid. _He_ would never have let himself wake up.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
The boy’s head snapped around as he cursed himself for a fool. He hadn’t even noticed one of the students, the boy, there, sitting in a truly hideous armchair and toweling his hair dry of all the inane things.  
  
“Aqua!” the student called, turning toward the room’s only door. “He woke up!”  
  
The boy tried to leap to his feet to defend himself, but his body refused to obey him. He felt hot and shaky all over. It was like being sick, he thought, or, no, it was like being tired. It was the way he’d felt when he’d run himself half to death, years ago, before ( **it got worse** – _he saved you_ ) Master Xehanort came.  
  
He wondered when the last time he’d eaten or slept was. Counting back, he thought that explained it. If ( **the old man’s sick idea of training** – _your disobedience_ ) exhaustion got him killed, he was going to be very unhappy. And dead, obviously.  
  
He could summon his Keyblade, at least. He held it in the closest thing to a guard position he could manage when sitting up was the most adrenaline could do for him.  
  
The student ignored it like the boy was too weak to bother with. Unfortunately, he was right. It was an effort just to focus. He had to say something, to do something, before the student hurt him. It wasn’t like the muscle-bound lummox would have any trouble there.  
  
The door opened, but before the boy could gather his strength to make a run for it, the other student was inside and closing the door behind her. As if the odds against him weren’t bad enough before.  
  
“We don’t want to hurt you,” said the boy student.  
  
The boy considered this statement on its merits. It was obviously a lie, but he couldn’t think what it was covering up. Why was he alive? Why had they put him in this room, on a real bed? What did they want from him? ( **They could have hurt him while he was unconscious.** _They wanted him awake to feel it._ )  
  
“What _do_ you want?” He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He’d meant to say something crafty, some cutting insult that would make them back away or some appeal to their better natures that would have them telling him everything they knew, but all the words he could find were clatteringly obvious.  
  
The two of them exchanged a look that they doubtless thought was subtle. Then the girl said, “That depends on what _you_ want.”  
  
The boy opened his mouth to tell them what he wanted. Suddenly, though, he couldn’t say for sure what it was that he did want. He wanted his body and his life back, but he’d been close enough to touch both and still unable to reach them. He wanted his Master to ( **leave him alone** – _praise him_ ) accomplish his plans, but he’d run away from where he should be and thrown those plans in jeopardy. He wanted the ache of his missing pieces to go away, but he couldn’t tell them that.  
  
He settled for, “I want you to stop looking at me like that!”  
  
It didn’t help. They kept looking at him in just the same way: patient, as though there was nothing he could do to be a threat to them, no reason to bother being hostile. They looked at him like they pitied him. The boy hated being pitied and always had. Pity meant nothing, accomplished nothing. People acted as though being sorry made him less hungry, as though he should care what they felt about him, as though it made him better somehow to know that they were sad.  
  
Master Xehanort never pitied him.  
  
“I hate you,” he said. “I hate you! Go away!”  
  
He meant it. He did. If he didn’t feel the lurch and swirl inside that meant he was going to be sick, that was just because he was tired.  
  
“This is our home,” said the male student. “You’re the one who came here.” His voice was slow and reasonable.  
  
The boy did not feel like dealing with reason right at the moment. “You’re the ones who kept my body in your _home_.” He could feel it again, barely a twinge unless he looked: his body was still very near. The students were clearly far too trusting, leaving him where he could – do what? He hadn’t been able to get back inside after all, just like the Master had said. They could leave him wherever they liked, and the boy wouldn’t suddenly become able to take his body back.  
  
“You were unconscious. We couldn’t just throw you out.”  
  
He sneered. Of course they could have. It wasn’t like he was much of a burden for the big idiot. “Not this body. My real one. You know, the one with my face on it?”  
  
The girl was frowning at him like she had something to say. “But – you have a face.”  
  
She indicated the boy with a sweep of her hand, and he realized with a sensation like tumbling over a waterfall that he had woken up without his mask on, had been sitting here all the while with the other face in plain view. There was even a mirror hanging on the wall, where he could see –  
  
The boy thought on, on, _on_ , and the mask slipped back from wherever it went almost quickly enough to keep him from seeing what the mirror showed. The room darkened a shade to his vision, and he wondered how he’d missed the brightness. He thought he’d gotten used to the dusky light that came through his mask. He also thought he never took the mask off. One of these was true.  
  
“Why did you take it off?” he demanded, but even to himself his voice sounded weak.  
  
The girl’s frown darkened to a scowl. “We didn’t! We didn’t do anything about any of the things you think we did. It was gone when we found you.”  
  
“You’re lying. You’re lying!” She had to be lying. He couldn’t let her be telling the truth. He never took his mask off, not even when he slept. He remembered what he’d done before passing out, and he hadn’t taken his mask off then. They had to have removed it. Why would he take it off in his sleep? He wouldn’t.  
  
He flung his Keyblade at her, but his arm was too weak, and she deflected it without seeming to notice. It hit the ground with a clatter. When the boy tried to call it back, something ached in his head like a sore muscle. Although he pushed through it enough to banish his Keyblade, doing so turned the ache to a stabbing pain. He wouldn’t cry out. He refused. But safe behind his mask, he bit down on his lip until the pain died down to a bearable level.  
  
“We’re not lying!” The boy student sounded frustrated. Good, thought the boy viciously. It was about time he got with the program.  
  
The girl student sounded almost as frustrated, but that didn’t stop her from pushing. “Why are you so upset? There’s nothing wrong with your face.”  
  
“It’s _not my face_!” He had nothing else to throw, even thinking too meaningfully about his Keyblade hurt, so the boy threw his words as if they could keep the sick feeling from taking over him again. “It’s not! It’s just a face that came with this body that isn’t mine either! My body is over _there_ ,” he pointed in the direction that particular ache came from, “and I don’t care what you think, it’s _mine_ and I want it _back_!”  
  
It didn’t work. The boy felt sick again, not as bad as before, but still too bad to suppress. All his emotions were trying to escape, and then the students would see, and he couldn’t fight them off, not like this. He had to keep them from knowing, or ( _the Master’s plans would be ruined_ ) they would kill him.  
  
Crimson and emerald starbursts exploded across his vision as he reached for the emotions with his will, but he ignored them. He’d done this once; he could do it again. It was easier to feel what he was doing this time, but harder, infinitely harder, to actually pull it off. He heard himself choke on nothing, causing an explosion of noise from the students, but they weren’t important. What was important was shoving the emotions away again where they couldn’t get him killed.  
  
He finished and drew a sudden deep breath: he’d forgotten to breathe. Everything hurt, and what didn’t hurt felt empty, but the emotions were gone. Someone was touching him. More than one someone? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t care. It wasn’t like they could find anywhere to touch him that didn’t already hurt.  
  
The boy shut his eyes and knew no more.

 

  


* * *

  
  
He was unconscious for a lot longer than before. Aqua couldn’t help but worry. Perhaps she was just in the habit, after worrying about Ventus so much. The two looked so alike, especially in their sleep. It was too similar in other ways, as well: she’d never heard anyone scream like that before Ventus.  
  
She and Terra took turns sleeping, training, cooking, and watching. She spooned broth carefully into Ventus’s mouth that evening and made sure he swallowed; Terra did the same in the morning. Neither of them quite knew what to do about the boy from the darkness. In the end, they made an extra plate of the sandwiches they fixed for themselves and left it by the bed, in case he woke. He hadn’t been asleep for as long.  
  
The sandwiches were starting to go stale when he woke up.  
  
Aqua had gotten so used to sitting over a sleeping prisoner (guest?) that it took her a moment to understand what the shifting sound of cloth meant. In her defense, it was morning again, and her sleep had been troubled at best. Eventually the sound penetrated to her conscious mind, and she dragged her eyes up from her book to find the stranger sitting up, or trying to. He wasn’t having much luck.  
  
That was probably bad. After sleeping so much, he should be full of energy, not struggling to pull himself into a sitting position. Aqua frowned. She wished she knew what was wrong with him. For that matter, she wished she knew what was wrong was Ventus. She wished it didn’t look so much like the same problem. She didn’t want any of what the stranger had said to be true.  
  
At least he was less of a danger like this. “Are you feeling better?” she asked for something to say. She could see perfectly well that he wasn’t.  
  
He startled and fell back onto the pillows. “What the – what’s it to you?”  
  
That was a funny question to ask. He’d passed out twice now, once right in front of Aqua’s eyes, after having some kind of seizure. Why wouldn’t she be concerned at the very least? “You were asleep for a while,” she said to avoid getting distracted from the question. “Like Ventus.”  
  
“ _I’m_ Ventus,” the boy said, weak but insistent.  
  
That, Aqua couldn’t let slide. “He said he was Ventus, and I believe him, because he’s not a madman who broke into the castle.”  
  
“Whatever. Believe what you want.”  
  
She intended to. “Do you know what’s wrong with you? Or with him?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“…Is that all you have to say?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She was fairly sure he was just saying that to be annoying. It was working. She was trying to help, and he was being difficult on purpose. She would just have to change his mind somehow. She considered what he might be interested by. “Your mask didn’t come off this time.” It was almost weirder seeing him sleep with the mask on than with it off. Without it, he looked like a boy; with it, he could be any kind of creature trying to lull them into complacence before striking.  
  
“It’s not supposed to come off,” he replied, sounding sulky and refreshingly childish. “Not coming off is what it’s _for_.”  
  
She chuckled despite the seriousness of the situation. That had sounded almost normal, like something an ordinary boy who didn’t insist that his face wasn’t his would say. Maybe this stranger wouldn’t be so bad, after all.  
  
“We made you some sandwiches,” she offered. He had to be starving by now.  
  
She couldn’t see what he was thinking, couldn’t even guess, not with the mask on, but he prodded at the plate as though it was going to attack him. That was strange. Not bad, but troubling. It was just food.  
  
Maybe he’d never seen sandwiches before. Did they have sandwiches in the darkness? It hadn’t been the kind of question Aqua had ever considered before. She added helpfully, “It’s bread with different spreads and meat and things.”  
  
“I know what a sandwich is, stupid,” the boy said.  
  
Aqua frowned. She didn’t think that was any way to talk to someone who was just trying to help. It wasn’t as though she had to do anything for him; quite the reverse, in fact. He could at least sound a little bit grateful. “Do you not want them?”  
  
Almost too fast for her to follow, the boy grabbed the plate and yanked it onto his lap. Part of Aqua wondered how quickly he could move when he was well. The other part was just confused, and a little worried. “They’re mine,” he snapped.  
  
“I was just asking,” she said. There was something strange about this boy, something that didn’t make sense, even beyond everything else. Maybe they were making a serious mistake having him here for a reason they didn’t even know yet.  
  
He picked up one of the sandwiches in his gloved fingers (now that she knew he had a face under the mask, it was easier to believe that there was a boy’s body under the strange ropy fabric of his outfit) and turned it over, poking and prodding and – was he _sniffing_? – it as though it might suddenly grow a mouth and start talking to him, or do something even more outlandish. Aqua wouldn’t have been surprised if it had, herself. Stranger things had happened in the past day.  
  
Apparently satisfied that the sandwich was all it purported to be, the boy started to lift it to his mouth – then stopped sharply and put it back down. Aqua couldn’t tell for sure, but she had a definite feeling that he was glaring at her.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Go away.” That tone of voice was definitely accompanied by a glare.  
  
She blinked. “Why?” Not that she thought her company was particularly welcome, but he hadn’t seemed to mind too much before.  
  
“Because.”  
  
The one-word answers were getting annoying. “That’s not good enough,” she said. “I’m here to watch you. I’m not going to turn my back the second you say so. Especially if you don’t ask nicely.”  
  
“Fine. _Please_ , o benevolent lady, go be a paragon of virtue somewhere else so I can eat in peace.” Somehow he managed to make “please” sound like a curse. It was almost impressive.  
  
“I’m not keeping you from eating,” Aqua said. Then her mind caught up with her and pointed out that she wasn’t, but the mask probably was. It didn’t look like there was any way to eat through it.  
  
She suspected that the boy was making a rude face at her. Whatever else the mask did, it certainly made it harder to tell for sure what he was thinking. Unfortunately for him, she didn’t care about being made a rude face at. This was getting ridiculous, and she was going to tell him so, since it seemed no one else had.  
  
“This is getting ridiculous,” she said. “I’ve already seen your face – fine, the face you’re currently wearing,” she added, forestalling the boy’s protest. “It’s not going to surprise me. Take off the mask and have something to eat before you fall asleep again.”  
  
He seemed to be thinking seriously about her words, and Aqua hoped she was getting through to him – then, in a flurry of motion, he and the sandwiches both disappeared completely under two layers of blanket.  
  
“Really?” she asked the resulting lump. “This is your idea of a solution? You’re going to get crumbs everywhere!”  
  
The lump of blankets radiated smugness. Shaking her head to herself, Aqua picked up her book again.

 

  


* * *

  
  
They kept feeding him. The boy wasn’t sure what to think about that. He’d been sure the first pile of sandwiches had to be drugged or poisoned or enchanted somehow, but he’d been too hungry to care. They didn’t seem to want him dead, and he could hardly feel worse than he already did. So he’d eaten them, and then waited for hours for the symptoms to set in, but nothing had happened. He hadn’t even started to feel queasy, the way he remembered feeling when he’d eaten something that was starting to go bad.  
  
The girl student had left while he’d been waiting, to be replaced by the boy student and another plate of sandwiches, accompanied this time by a glass of some kind of fruit juice he’d never had before. There had been two plates, actually: one the student had eaten himself, and one he’d left in the exact same place the other one had been. The boy had watched from under the blankets (he was starting to like it there; they couldn’t even look at him, but he could watch them without their knowing), but he hadn’t been able to catch the student even looking at them. So he’d eaten those too. They hadn’t said he couldn’t, and he was still hungry.  
  
He felt better after having eaten. There was nothing mere food could do about the huge and aching emptiness inside him, but at least he wasn’t hungry as well. The drink helped also: he hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until he wasn’t.  
  
He still felt weaker than a baby, and his mind felt like there were knives inside his skull whenever he thought too hard of magic, but he’d felt like that before. Being warm and fed as well was an improvement.  
  
He still didn’t know what the two of them had planned for him. It was starting to annoy him. They hadn’t killed him. They hadn’t even locked him up, not really: this room was no kind of dungeon. They’d fed him. They hadn’t asked him more questions, or tried to touch him, or done anything at all to him.  
  
He hated it. He wished they would do something already, so he could stop waiting for it to happen. The waiting was the worst part. The boy recalled that he always thought that, up until the waiting stopped. Then he tended to change his mind pretty quickly. There were ( **cruelties** – _punishments_ ) things Master Xehanort could do that were far worse than the waiting, when the boy was clumsy or stupid or weak. Still, at least once a punishment had been chosen, the boy would know what was going to happen.  
  
That didn’t mean he was in any hurry to get back, especially not when he was this weak. His Master had absolutely no patience for weakness. The boy doubted he could survive regular training right now, let alone punishment. So instead of trying to get away, he waited, watched, and tried to guess what the students had planned for him.  
  
The students traded back and forth several more times over the course of the day. Every time they switched, the one who was arriving brought some kind of food and drink, which they left where the boy could get to it. After a few more meals, he did start to feel sick, in the unfamiliar way that meant he’d eaten all he could. He took the food under the blankets anyway and sought out somewhere to hide it. It was just as well he didn’t want to sleep, because the pillowcase was unlikely to be comfortable anymore.  
  
The boy started feeling tired by late afternoon, but he refused to sleep. He’d already slept more than he needed. Anyway, he wasn’t going to sleep with someone in the room, watching him. They might be stupid, but he wasn’t. If he fell asleep, there was no knowing how he would wake up. They could do something more to him, like they’d already done.  
  
The girl student was watching him again, but she had clearly decided he wasn’t a serious threat. He hated that she was right. She’d tried to talk to him, but he’d pretended to be asleep. She hadn’t done anything but gone back to sitting in that horrible chair and working on some kind of metal trinket.  
  
Now she was tired, fumbling with her tools and blinking too much. The boy saw his chance. He could get away and find somewhere safe from their power, if he was lucky and careful.  
  
He hated taking his mask off, but this was important. She would be sure to believe he was asleep if he did that, and as long as he didn’t look at the mirror, he could handle it. So he took his mask off and let some hair poke out from under the blanket. He tried to relax, to look like sleeping bodies looked. He even snored a little. But all the time, he watched her from under the covers.  
  
She looked at him a few times, but it took a while for her to stop trying to work. She yawned more and more often. Then, at last, she laid her head down on her arms and shut her eyes.  
  
The boy waited. She didn’t snore, but she sounded asleep.  
  
He twitched the covers back, making just a little noise. If she was faking it, or if she woke, he could pretend to still be sleeping. She didn’t move.  
  
Standing up was far more difficult than it had any business being. The boy hadn’t realized just how tired he was while he’d been lying down. He clenched his teeth and took a step as quietly as he possibly could, then another, then another still.  
  
The door was shut, of course, but it opened smoothly. There was still no sound from where she was asleep behind him. He swung the door closed as carefully as he could manage, but the sound of it clicking shut seemed impossibly loud in the nighttime silence.  
  
He was out. He’d done it. The boy realized he hadn’t thought about what to do next. He hadn’t really thought he would succeed. Now he had, and he needed ( **somewhere to stay** – _to go back where he should be_ ) a place to sleep.  
  
There was only one other room in this place that he knew of for sure. He let the ache guide him to the right bedroom. There was his body, just the way he’d left it, lying on the bed like everything was safe.  
  
That bed wasn’t any safer than the one he’d left, but there was space under it: nice, dark, defensible space, where no one could see him unless they looked, and they wouldn’t look. The boy scooted in, slipped his mask back on, and promptly fell asleep.

 

  


* * *

  
  
It had been less than two days, and already the schedule they were keeping was starting to bother Terra. He hadn’t spent so little time with Aqua since she’d first come to live at the castle, and that had been years ago. Even when they were fighting, which wasn’t often, there were always meals and training whether they wanted to see each other or not. Now one of them was always watching the boy from the darkness while the other slept, ate, or trained. Even if he stayed in the room when it was her turn, the boy was always there. They couldn’t really relax.  
  
Master Eraqus was coming home today, he reminded himself as he rolled out of bed. He would sort everything out, and things could go back to normal.  
  
When he walked into the guest bedroom, it was obvious that something was wrong. Aqua was slumped over the table, and the bed was empty.  
  
“Aqua!” He lifted her as carefully as he could. She blinked slowly and mumbled, and Terra breathed again. She was just asleep.  
  
“Whadizzit?” He could see her realize where she was and jerk into full wakefulness.  
  
“You fell asleep. Are you okay?”  
  
She brushed his hands impatiently from her shoulders. “I’m fine. Is -?”  
  
“He’s not here.” Terra had no idea if the boy had just fled in the night, or if he was somewhere around, lurking, waiting for a chance to strike. “He can’t have gone far,” he added to make Aqua feel better, hoping it was true.  
  
It didn’t really work: her mouth tightened and her eyes dropped just the same. Still, her voice was even when she said, “Go check on Ventus, in case he’s in there again. I’ll start looking.”  
  
Every time he went into Ventus’s room now, Terra felt a short spike of mixed fear and hope. The boy who said he was Ventus had woken up already, twice, so didn’t that mean Ventus should be waking up too? What if one day Terra came in and someone was there to greet him? On the other hand, he kept half-expecting to see that devouring darkness again, this time completely consuming Ventus’s faint light.  
  
This time, like every other since the dark boy had arrived, he saw neither. Ventus was asleep still, motionless as ever, but the darkness was nowhere to be seen. It was just the same as always. Terra came close enough to pat Ventus on the shoulder. “Hey.” It was silly to talk to someone who couldn’t hear, but he wanted to believe that it helped, somehow, to remind Ventus that there was something here besides the quiet of an empty room.  
  
…It wasn’t so quiet, today. Someone was snoring softly.  
  
Terra listened closer, but the noise wasn’t coming from Ventus. No matter how little it made sense, it sounded like there was someone else in the room.  
  
There weren’t a lot of places to hide, and even fewer where Terra could imagine someone falling asleep. He bent and looked under the bed.  
  
How he’d gotten there Terra didn’t know, but it was certainly the strange boy curled up under the bed, apparently sleeping soundly. He had his mask on, but it didn’t seem to be making him uncomfortable. Despite the mask, he looked even more like a normal boy this way.  
  
Not wanting to wake him, Terra went out into the hall before he called, “Aqua! It’s all right, I found him!”  
  
She came at a run, already looking frazzled. With how quickly she arrived, she must have been checking the other bedrooms. “Where? Is Ventus - ?”  
  
“He’s fine. He’s under the bed,” Terra said, then realizing that this was somewhat confusing, he added, “The – boy is under the bed. Sleeping.”  
  
“What in the world was he doing there?” Aqua asked. Terra didn’t answer; he didn’t have the faintest idea either. “Well, as long as nobody’s hurt, I suppose… Do you want me to take another turn, since I fell asleep instead of watching?”  
  
“I’m already awake,” he said. “You go eat. Or finish your nap.” He smirked a little. Now that the crisis was over, he could appreciate how rare it was for Aqua to be the one making a mistake for once.  
  
She hit him, not hard. “You hush. I’ll get you both – you all – breakfast. And clean up the kitchen before Master Eraqus gets back and sees that mess you made.”  
  
“You made at least half the mess!” Terra protested, but he was smiling as he said it, and so was she. This, at least, was close to normal.  
  
When he went back into the room, the snoring had stopped, but Ventus was still the only person on the bed. Terra shrugged, shut the door, and flopped down on the rug. The boy under the bed had untangled himself from his own limbs. With the mask it was impossible to tell for sure, but it looked like he was watching him.  
  
“What are you doing under there?” Terra asked. “It doesn’t look very comfortable.” Given a choice between sleeping under beds and sleeping on top of them, he preferred the side with pillows every time.  
  
“Your friend fell asleep,” said the boy, ignoring the question. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”  
  
“Good at what?” Terra privately hoped the boy would answer. At least then someone would know what they were doing, which was more than Terra did.  
  
He gestured sharply at Terra, Ventus, and the room. “Keeping dangerous prisoners or whatever you think you’re doing. Messing with my head.”  
  
“We’re not,” Terra began, but he didn’t know how to go on. The boy was a prisoner, though he hadn’t escaped when he could have. He was dangerous, or he would be if he weren’t sick or hurt or whatever was wrong with him. They were trying to keep him. As for messing with his head, from the sound of it someone else had already done all the messing there was to do, but the boy didn’t seem to believe that, and Terra didn’t know how to prove it.  
  
“Why are you in here?” he asked again. “And why under the bed?”  
  
There was a long silence. “…It feels better closer to my body,” the boy said, sounding like the words were being dragged out of him. “And I don’t know how you expect me to sleep with someone else in the room.”  
  
Terra wanted to say that Ventus should count as someone else, but no matter how the boy from the darkness was or wasn’t connected to Ventus, someone who had been asleep for so long without showing any sign of waking didn’t count in the same way as Aqua did, even if she had been asleep at the moment. Instead, he said, “Are you going to come out?”  
  
The strange boy considered it in his mind, then without another word he scrambled backwards out from under the bed, so that Ventus was between him and Terra when he stood up again.  
  
Terra stood likewise, watching him. He looked healthier, and that meant more dangerous. But the boy didn’t move toward Ventus nor toward Terra. Instead he turned insolently toward the bookshelf and started reading the titles of the books out loud. “ ‘Fiat Lux: An Intermediate Guide’, boring and useless, ‘History of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms’, useful but boring, ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’, boring and useless and dishonest… Do you have _anything_ that isn’t incredibly stupid?”  
  
“It’s not dishonest!” Terra said, more hotly than he knew he should. He was very fond of that book for reasons he didn’t feel like even thinking about in the presence of someone with so much dark power, in case now that he was well the boy could pick the thoughts right from Terra’s mind.  
  
He laughed, and Terra wondered if his thoughts really had been overheard, but the dark boy only said, “Well, then it’s stupid. Which would you prefer? It’s a lie either way.”  
  
“It’s _not_ ,” Terra insisted. Despite himself, he remembered seeing the book for the first time and thinking…something far more similar than he wanted to think of. The book was true, though, or it could be. About the light, it was true. He knew that now.  
  
About the darkness, though…Maybe this boy just didn’t know any better. Maybe he could learn. Maybe… Terra shook himself mentally. Someone with so much darkness in them and no light that he’d been able to see couldn’t understand, no matter how much he told him. There were people like that.  
  
“Get out of there. We’re going back to your room,” he said harshly. It wasn’t a good idea to let the dark stranger be too close to Ventus. And maybe then he would shut up.  
  
“What if I don’t want to?” the boy rejoined.  
  
Terra opened his mouth to say something angry, then shut it again. He wasn’t going to let this wind him up. He was stronger than that. He wasn’t going to make the dark boy go anywhere, either, not when he was leaning back and practically daring Terra to hit him. That wasn’t the kind of person he was.  
  
“Then don’t,” he said eventually. “Be bored here.”  
  
“Bored here or bored there? Such choices.” The boy shrugged as though he didn’t know Terra had almost gone over there to drag him back by force, or as though he did know but didn’t care. “Might as well go there, then.”  
  
Terra gave up on understanding him. At least it wouldn’t be for much longer.  
  
“Not much longer?” the boy said, and Terra realized he’d spoken aloud. “You mean you actually have a plan for getting rid of me other than death by boredom?”  
  
“Master Eraqus comes home today,” Terra said shortly, opening the guestroom door and holding it until the boy went in. “He’ll decide what to do with you.”  
  
At least after that the boy was quiet. Terra tried not to think of it as too quiet.

 

  


* * *

  
  
The other Master arrived in the middle of the afternoon. By that time, the boy had had enough time to think of the right answers for all the questions he was likely to be asked, and then enough time after that to worry about the questions he hadn’t thought of.  
  
What if Master Xehanort had already spoken about his lesser colleague about him? What if the other Master knew what the boy was and what he was for? What if his Master arrived with him to find the boy and take him back?  
  
The boy wasn’t sure how he felt about the possibility. These people were noxious and naïve and confusing, but they’d fed him and given him a bed and left him more or less alone. It was a stupid thing for them to do, but if they wanted to invite their eventual destruction into their home, that was their affair. He wasn’t about to complain.  
  
They were probably just acting this way because they were only students and didn’t know any better, the boy decided. They didn’t have the authority to make decisions. When their Master got here, he wouldn’t have that problem.  
  
He would have run, if he could have, but when he reached for the power he’d barely learned to harness, the power to travel, there was nothing there but pain blistering down his nerves. Most of his power was like that, even after having slept and eaten. Maybe he was broken. Maybe trying to force himself into his body had broken something inside him even more than it already was.  
  
The boy tried not to think about it. Instead, he thought about more things he might say, if he was asked. Having something to concentrate on made it easy not to feel. That whole day, he didn’t once feel sick too badly to suppress.  
  
Then the other Master returned.  
  
It was the boy student sitting with him again. The boy heard the footsteps before he did: two sets instead of one. He sat up and tried not to feel anything at all. The door opened.  
  
The other Master wasn’t as old as Master Xehanort, the boy thought: his hair was still mostly dark, his shoulders unbowed, and he moved like a skilled warrior. His Master was the greater and more powerful of the two, of course, but while this Master might be a fool as Master Xehanort said, he was no weakling. The boy couldn’t hope to defeat him, or even hold him off. He would have to convince him.  
  
And he would have to be very convincing indeed, for the boy noticed that his guess had been right: this Master had the confidence his students lacked, and he meant to use it.  
  
The boy swallowed. He could survive this. He could. A strong fool was still a fool, and these students were soft because their Master was soft.  
  
“Master Eraqus!” exclaimed the boy student, standing to formal attention. Behind his mask, the boy sneered. Master Xehanort never expected such posturing ( **only total obedience** – _only due respect_ ).  
  
“Terra,” said the other Master, “it is good to be home. Aqua has told me what occurred in my absence. This is the being in question?” He looked at the boy. The boy looked back, grateful for the mask that made it impossible for the man to read his eyes.  
  
“Yes, Master,” said the Terra student.  
  
“And what do you have to say for yourself?”  
  
The boy had prepared a story in case he had a chance to explain himself freely. It was even mostly true. “Great Master,” he began, since flattery was seldom a bad thing, particularly of someone like this, “I don’t mean any harm. I came looking for my body, because it was taken from me and I want it back. That’s my right. I didn’t hurt anyone.”  
  
The other Master frowned. The boy tensed. He’d already said something wrong. But the Master only said, “You refer to Ventus.”  
  
“I am Ventus!” The words leapt out of his mouth without permission. He choked back the rest, all the things he wanted to say to the person responsible for trying to hide his body from him and making it impossible for him to go back where he belonged. There wasn’t any point in saying it. It wouldn’t save him, and the other Master knew anyway.  
  
“My students have told me of your claim,” said the other Master heavily. “They do not know what happened to injure Ventus, as I do. If you came from Ventus, then you are his darkness, an abomination that should not exist, nothing more.”  
  
The boy made himself breathe deeply. He wouldn’t fear. Fear was defeat, and he was going to win. “Please, Master, that’s not true. _He_ doesn’t remember my life before then, but _I_ do. I remember everything. Doesn’t that make me the real one?”  
  
He shouldn’t have phrased that as a question, no matter how obsequious he was trying to be. The shake of the other Master’s head took away his fragile hope. “No. You are only darkness, a shadow. Light is the true self. But I see you are feeding on Ventus for sustenance. You cannot continue to exist!”  
  
The boy dove off the bed just in time to avoid most of the white fire that flashed from the other Master’s Keyblade, suddenly in his hand. The man might be old, but he was fast: the boy felt something like burning chain wrap around his right ankle as he fell to the floor in a tumble of bedclothes.  
  
There was no preventing that pain from escaping, nor the fear that followed. The boy didn’t care to try. He struggled to get free of the blankets, bleakly aware that there was no way he would be in time, not if the other Master was that fast to draw. It wouldn’t matter anyway: there was nothing he could do against that much power and skill, no way he could escape for long enough to travel in the darkness. But he was going to die on his feet this time.  
  
At first, he didn’t realize that he hadn’t screamed. It was his voice, familiar to him as his own face. Then the others turned away from him, even the other Master, and he remembered that his voice, like his face, wasn’t his anymore. It had been his body, the other boy, who had screamed.  
  
The other Master turned back to him almost instantly, but that had given the boy time to scramble to his feet. His burned ankle complained bitterly at being stood on, but he ignored it. That pain went to join the other. They were outside somewhere, doing him no good, as if they ever had.  
  
“What did you do?” The other Master hadn’t looked angry before, but now he did.  
  
The boy refused to back down. “I didn’t do anything. What did _you_ do?” If he was going to die, he might as well stop groveling.  
  
The Aqua student had run for the scream. She ran back, looking pale. The boy was glad. Anything he could do to hurt them before they killed him, he was glad of. “Master, it’s Ventus! He’s – in his sleep, he was grabbing at his leg! There was a burn!”  
  
For a moment, the boy was as confused as any of them. Then he realized: this close, at least, the connection between him and his body went both ways. It was still his, and not the other boy’s, if the other boy even really existed.  
  
The other Master worked it out too, if the way his gaze went from his student to the boy’s injured right leg was any indication. It didn’t seem to make him any less angry, though. “What have you done to Ventus? Undo it at once!”  
  
That was so ridiculous, the boy couldn’t help laughing. “I never did anything to _my body_! There’s nothing to do or undo, except whatever _you did_ to shut me out! If it weren’t for that, my body would be perfectly fine – better, even, since there would be enough of him to _open his eyes_.”  
  
He managed to draw his Keyblade with only a small throb, not even enough to need suppression. “So go on, kill me. Kill Ventus. Do you believe me now?”  
  
Both the students looked pale now, though the Terra one showed it less. They’d probably never even seen someone die before. Neither of them was ever going to be a Keyblade Master if they stayed that easy to shake. Their Master, however, was as hard as stone. He raised his Keyblade, light glittering on the end of it. There was nowhere else the boy could dodge to.  
  
The boy tried not to think of his own Master, but it happened anyway. Little guilts went tearing out of him to somewhere too far away to be of any use. He was going to fail again, completely, and there would be no second chance this time, no way of being useful enough, strong enough, good enough. ( **He was glad to spoil the old man’s fun** – _He was a miserable failure_ – **He was going to get away.** )  
  
“Master –”  
  
It was the Aqua student. The boy didn’t bother looking at her. She didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the next - last - five seconds of his life.  
  
But her Master did, and he was looking at her instead of bringing his Keyblade down, though the boy didn’t understand why.  
  
“He’s been here for days, and he didn’t do anything wrong, when he could have. And Ventus is – he didn’t do anything wrong either. Isn’t there anything else we can do?”  
  
The boy stared at her. What was she thinking? How could she argue with her Master like that? He wondered if he would get to see her punishment before he died. The prospect didn’t make him as pleased as it should. He wished he could see her angle. She couldn’t be stupid enough to think she could just get away with disrespect like that, so she had to have some kind of reason to think it would be worth it. What did she want him alive for?  
  
The other Master was shaking his head, but he didn’t look angry the way she deserved. The boy wondered if he was reading the other Master wrong. It seemed likely, since he actually answered her, “It isn’t human, Aqua. Beings such as this upset the balance by their mere existence. That balance must be maintained at any cost.”  
  
“That’s not true!” The boy didn’t care about disrespect. There was nothing this Master could do to him that he wasn’t going to do already. “That doesn’t even make _sense_. You didn’t kill the other boy when Master Xehanort brought him, and if I’m unbalanced, so is he. You don’t really care about the ‘balance’ at all, do you? You just hate me for existing.”  
  
That looked like it hurt the students, at least. The boy was glad. They deserved to be hurt, them and their light. His stomach rolled, and a whole battalion of hates and angers formed outside. For a moment, the boy didn’t care about the students and their Master. He just felt hollow again.  
  
“It isn’t my fault I got split in half,” he said. “It’s not.” He wished he weren’t lying.  
  
Now it was the Terra student who was talking out of turn. “Master, please?” The other Master looked at him, too. From the way he dropped his eyes to the floor, he at least seemed aware of how much trouble he was going to be in, once the boy was dead.  
  
The other Master looked at the boy even more closely than before. The boy felt as though he was being stripped of all his armor at once, down to the skin and beneath. Maybe all Masters could do that. He looked back, though he didn’t have the trick of it. He wasn’t a coward like the other boy. He could look back.  
  
With a flash of light, the other Master’s Keyblade vanished.  
  
The boy stared. What had happened? Had the other Master decided that a quick death was too merciful? That would be like a Master. Or was he really as soft, and as much of a fool, as Master Xehanort had said? Confusions sprouted at the edges of the boy’s awareness. He wasn’t dead, but now the tension was back, and he loathed the tension.  
  
“Perhaps it would be in haste,” said the other Master. “Very well. If you both speak for it, then I will hear what it has told you. Go to the hall. We will speak there, and I will come to my final decision.”  
  
The students left in a hurry, leaving the door open behind them. The boy tried to follow, but the other Master’s hand closed on the back of his neck with a grip like a vise. “Whatever you have done to their minds, I will find it out. Do not so much as attempt to leave my sight. And get rid of that. It is not yours to bear.”  
  
The boy banished his Keyblade obediently. His death was only delayed a little while, that much was clear. This Master liked to toy with his prey as much as his Master did.  
  
He would make of that little while what he could.

 

  


* * *

  
  
Aqua nibbled nervously on her thumbnail. The grand hall had never felt this formal before: it was their training hall on ordinary days, the meeting room when guests came, but today it was a courtroom, and she wasn’t sure who was on trial.  
  
Perhaps she shouldn’t have spoken up. A Master knew better than a student what was a threat to the light and what to do about one, and it was presumptuous to act as though she could possibly know something that Master Eraqus didn’t. But, in the same way she hadn’t been able to do it herself when the boy had first arrived, she couldn’t watch him be destroyed.  
  
Now she was going to have to explain why. She tried to get her thoughts in order, but it was difficult to explain even to herself.  
  
Master Eraqus arrived before she’d come to any kind of helpful conclusion, dragging the boy with him. Looking at the boy, how he stumbled over his own feet, Aqua remembered at least one reason to take care of him: he was hurt. No matter how it had happened or what the hurt caused, he was hurt and tired and couldn’t take care of himself.  
  
“Very well,” said Master Eraqus. Aqua and Terra stood to attention. The boy, of course, didn’t. “Tell me everything that happened while I was away to make you believe that a creature of darkness has a place here.”  
  
So she did. She recounted as much as she could remember, down to the word, and Terra filled in for her when she stumbled, or when they got to a point where she’d been asleep. The boy didn’t say anything the whole time, just stood there and watched. It made her uncomfortable, the way he just stood there. And watched. It was as though he didn’t care what happened to him, as though none of this had anything to do with him anymore.  
  
“…And then you returned, Master,” Terra finished.  
  
Master Eraqus looked soberly down at the boy. “And on this basis, you would offer him sanctuary here? A nameless, faceless creature of the darkness?”  
  
“I have a name,” the boy insisted. It was the first time he’d spoken in at least an hour.  
  
“A name you stole is not yours to bear.”  
  
“I’m not the thief!” said the boy. “ _He_ is!”  
  
“And he has a face,” Aqua added. “Under the mask. He looks a lot like Ventus.”  
  
“That’s not my face.”  
  
“Then whose is it?” Master Eraqus asked. “Did you steal it from some other victim?”  
  
“…I don’t know,” the boy said. “It just…happened, like this body happened. I took off the mask, and it was there. I didn’t steal it! I didn’t ask for any of it!”  
  
Master Eraqus looked at both her and Terra sharply. “And you believe this?”  
  
They both nodded. “He said it wasn’t his face before,” said Terra. “And he was upset that we saw it. Really upset.”  
  
“Show me.” The boy didn’t move. “Show me at once!”  
  
To Aqua’s surprise, rather than making the mask disappear the way he’d made it appear before, the boy simply reached up and tugged it off his head. Underneath was the same face she’d seen before: Ventus’s face, with someone else’s black hair and someone else’s yellow eyes. The boy looked defiant, but she thought he was scared as well. She didn’t really blame him. She was scared for him.  
  
It was even easier, with the mask off, to remember that he hadn’t acted like a monster after that first day, and even then he had been as much a boy as a monster. He hid under the blankets to eat and snuck out of the room to sleep under Ventus’s bed and made quiet whimpering noises in his sleep, like he was in pain.  
  
“Master, please,” she said again, “isn’t it what we’re here for, to take care of people the darkness hurt?” Master Eraqus could help him, surely. He knew so much.  
  
She thought for a moment the boy was going to say something stupid, but he kept silent. Instead, Master Eraqus said, “One chance, no more. And since you vouch for him, it is your responsibility to keep an eye on him and tell me if he wastes that chance. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes, Master!” she and Terra chorused eagerly.  
  
Master Eraqus looked the boy in the eyes for the first time. “And you? Do you understand that if you put any of my students in danger, you will have proven that you are nothing more than darkness?”  
  
“I understand.”  
  
“Then I grant you sanctuary of this castle and land, by the power I bear and the power I guard. So long as it is safe with you, then you are safe with it.” Aqua watched as Master Eraqus drew his Keyblade and tapped the boy lightly on each shoulder. She had seen this done before, but not for a long time. When the Keyblade glowed, she flinched despite herself, expecting the boy to be burned as he had been before by the power of light, but he made no sound.  
  
He took a few steps toward them, his face blank and lost looking. Aqua smiled encouragingly and reached out to pat him on the shoulder.  
  
Before she could even touch him, he recoiled so violently that he almost fell.  The lost look left his face, but the wariness that replaced it was just as worrisome. Aqua wondered if there was something he didn’t understand after all.  
  
“She’s not gonna hurt you,” Terra said. Aqua looked over at him: where she felt mostly confused and a little worried, Terra looked mostly worried and only a little confused. She wondered what he knew that she didn’t.  
  
The boy scowled. “I know that.” Still, Aqua didn’t try to touch him again.  
  
Instead she said lightly, “So is there something we can call you other than Ventus?”  
  
“Why _not_ Ventus?” Without the helmet on, it was obvious the boy was pouting.  
  
“Because we met him first, and he introduced himself first, and we can’t change his name while he’s asleep and can’t give permission, or he won’t know who we mean when he wakes up.” He was going to wake up. Aqua was sure of it. Everything could be fixed, in time.  
  
The boy muttered something about their changing _his_ name without permission, but Aqua looked at Master Eraqus’s stern face and knew that this was an argument she was going to win, one way or another. She didn’t want the Master to have to step in and settle it right after she and Terra had promised to handle the boy. “You can talk to him about it when he wakes up, but until then, don’t you have any other name at all?”  
  
The boy looked everywhere but at her. “I guess. He gave me a name when I got split.”  
  
That sounded promising. “What was it?”  
  
“Vanitas.”


	2. (i never said you had to) Offer Me a Second Chance

The boy whose name was not Vanitas, even if he was answering to it for the moment, woke out of a sound sleep with a bell ringing in his ears.  
  
He realized as his feet hit the floor that it wasn’t actually a bell, or even a sound. It was a feeling, one he couldn’t identify but wasn’t sure he liked, like a sun bursting into life: not burning him yet, but only a matter of time. Something new was happening in his heart or what was left of it. That was all he needed to make his life perfectly unbearable.  
  
It hadn’t really been unbearable for the past week. He’d been allowed to keep living, and even to keep living in the castle, as a guest, which might be a polite word for ‘prisoner’ but went with a polite way of being treated. They kept feeding him. They’d even given him clothes that didn’t fit like a second skin, clothes like the ones he used to wear before that day. The only thing they’d asked for in exchange was for him to stop wearing his mask. If he turned the mirror to the wall and made sure his hair stayed where he couldn’t see it, he could pretend there had never been a reason to where the mask at all. He didn’t know what else they wanted, but until they asked, he was going to consider the bargain made and paid.  
  
The Master didn’t like him, but he could deal with that. It was easy: as long as he didn’t get caught anywhere he wasn’t supposed to be, do anything memorable where someone could see, or try to leave, the Master left him to the two students. He tried to avoid resenting the fact that the Master refused to talk to him when they were in the same room, or indeed do anything with him other than watch him like a hawk. The resentment happened anyway, but so far it had never happened while the Master was watching.  
  
His emotions were thronging around the outside of the castle day and night, though. No one knew they came from him, but it made him nervous to feel them there or hear the others talking about them. Aqua and Terra didn’t know about them, or about most of the other things he could do. He wasn’t sure what they would do with him if they found out.  
  
And now, it seemed, he was developing some new power to hide until he ( **was found** – _came to his senses_ ) got bored and left. That was entirely typical.  
  
Before any of his feelings could get too intense, Aqua’s voice echoed down the hallway.  
  
“Ventus is awake!”  
  
He was out the door in a second, faster than Terra even though Terra’s bedroom was closer than the one he’d been given. (All the other bedrooms were between him and his body. He wanted the first room they’d put him in, but the Master had said to keep him separate.) Swinging around the doorpost, he saw that Aqua hadn’t lied: his body was sitting up, eyes open. Now he knew what the bell-feeling was. Now he also knew that he didn’t like it, not at all.  
  
He pounced on his body before anyone could stop him. “Who’s in there?” he demanded. “Let me in!” Maybe if he pushed and the other boy pulled –  
  
His body’s eyes were blank and distant, empty in a viscerally disturbing way. This was worse than watching his body sleep. At least then his eyes should be closed. Now they looked open, but only just alive.  
  
He shook his body. “Come on! Am I in there or not?”  
  
His body stirred and turned towards him. Those blank eyes looked at him, aware but not aware. “Who…are you?”  
  
None of his feelings had escaped, but he felt suddenly hollow all the same. Of everything he’d thought might happen if, when, his body and what was inside it woke up, he had never thought that it might not _know_ him. He was part of it. He could feel where it was, wherever it was. Every foot away from it hurt a little more. It had to know him. It had to. It still felt his pain. They were connected. It had to know him.  
  
There was no sign of recognition in his eyes.  
  
Someone yanked him away from his body. He thought at first, as he struggled to stay where he ( **needed to and had to** – _didn’t and never would_ ) belonged, that it was Terra, but when he was dropped unceremoniously on the floor, he realized that it was worse: it was the Master.  
  
He tried to make himself inconspicuous. The other two touched him sometimes, and that had been okay so far, but the Master never had. His side hurt where he’d fallen on it. He didn’t care. Everything else hurt worse. There had to be a horde of new emotions outside, but he didn’t care about that either.  
  
The Master bent over his body briefly, then turned on him again. He clenched his jaw and braced himself. This was going to hurt. It might manage to hurt more than he hurt already. “You were not to touch him!”  
  
“He’s _me_!” he replied. He was sure of that. It was the one certain thing, had been ever since that day. That was his body. The other boy was a part of him. He was. He wasn’t going to back down on that, no matter what the Master did. Not now.  
  
Terra helped him to his feet. “Did you do anything?” he asked. At least he was asking.  
  
“ _No_.” He didn’t know what he was supposed to have done. He hadn’t even tried to get back inside. He’d just asked. He’d just looked.  
  
“Terra, get him out of here,” the Master ordered. “Ventus needs quiet.”  
  
He went along with Terra without protest. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do, and the Master was angry enough at him already.  
  
Terra was looking at him sidelong. There was a question there, probably. Terra had a lot of questions for him. Sometimes Terra would even ask one, and he would occasionally answer. He didn’t know what Terra wanted to ask right now. He definitely didn’t have any answers to give, just a hollow space where everything of him had once been.  
  
“You were glowing again,” Terra said eventually.  
  
He blinked. “Glowing?” He was fairly certain he’d never glowed before.  
  
“When you and Ventus touched, he started to shine with light, and you – showed your darkness. It looked like you were doing something to him. Master Eraqus was worried.”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t,” he said, just for the sake of saying it. If anything, it was the other way around. He hadn’t had time to do anything.  
  
Terra nodded. He usually believed him. This was confusing, since he was quite sure Terra neither liked nor trusted him. Terra was just a trusting sort of person, it seemed. That or a very good liar indeed with some kind of deep game going on. He hadn’t decided yet which was more likely.  
  
“What’s wrong with him?” he demanded as the silence drew long. “What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t he – why don’t I – he doesn’t know me!”  
  
It didn’t make any kind of sense. He would have known the other boy anywhere, in any kind of body. He could never have escaped knowing. That connection was still there; he could feel it in the slow ache that increased minutely with every step he took. It never went away. Maybe it never would, now.  
  
“I don’t know,” Terra said.  
  
The boy whose name wasn’t --couldn’t be -- Vanitas hoped against hope that he was lying.

* * *

 

  
  
His name was Ventus. That was more or less all he knew about himself, and even that was shaky. It bothered him, a bit, how everything was shaky. They said it would get better with time. That was good. He wanted it to get better. The shakiness of the world bothered him.  
  
It was odd that he was bothered, he thought, since the world had always been shaky. He should be used to it. They said he hadn’t always been this way, but he’d forgotten. That explained it, sort of.  
  
He was remembering new things now. That was nice. At the moment he was trying to remember the way to the dining room. It wasn’t working very well. All the corridors looked too much the same, and he didn’t always pay enough attention to count.  
  
He took what he thought was the right turn, but from the way Terra’s hand pressed down on his shoulder, it wasn’t really. He turned back onto the right path. He was glad Terra was there to make sure he didn’t get lost again. He’d gotten lost before, and he hadn’t liked it at all. The castle was too big and empty.  
  
It was pretty, though, with all the colored windows and things. Ventus didn’t mind that it took a long time to find where he was going, as long as someone helped him get there in the end. There was always something new to see on the way.  
  
The dining room was smaller and more comfortable than most of the rooms he had to walk through to get there. Aqua said there was another dining room, a bigger one, which they used sometimes for formal occasions, but he hadn’t had to go there yet. He liked the small dining room. He knew where almost everything in it was now.  
  
He only tried to take one other wrong turn before getting to the dining room this time. That was better than yesterday, but it was still shaky. He was learning, Aqua said. He was doing fine, Terra said. It would take time, Master Eraqus said.  
  
The other boy never said anything to Ventus at all.  
  
Ventus didn’t like that. He liked when people talked to him, even though he couldn’t talk back as quickly as they did. It was nice to just listen and get used to the shapes words made. The other boy talked to Terra and Aqua, but not to Ventus, and he looked at Ventus in a funny way. It was too bad: Ventus wanted to talk to the other boy, but he didn’t know anything to begin talking about, and the other boy wouldn’t talk to him first. He didn’t remember the other boy’s name, even. He hadn’t heard it much: the other boy usually left when Ventus was in the room, and no matter how Ventus tried, he kept forgetting the name every time he did hear it.  
  
The other boy was in the dining room when Ventus and Terra got there. He wasn’t talking, though. He didn’t talk much at all, Ventus thought. Aqua was talking to Master Eraqus instead about something Ventus didn’t understand. That was all right. He could listen anyway.  
  
“Is it really that – Good morning, Ventus!” Aqua broke off what she was saying to greet him with a smile.  
  
He smiled back. “Good morning, Aqua. Good morning, Master Eraqus.” The other boy didn’t greet him, and Ventus didn’t know how to begin. He sighed. Maybe someone would tell him some time.  
  
“Is it really that bad?” Aqua picked up her conversation again.  
  
There were plates of breakfast left out for him and Terra. Ventus took one and started to eat. He knew how to do that, anyway.  
  
“These creatures are spreading rapidly,” Master Eraqus said. “Any rapid change in the balance of different groups is dubious, as it may presage conflict.”  
  
The morning sun made interesting patterns through the colored window. If Ventus moved his plate from one side to another, it made his food look first red, then blue, then green, then gold. It seemed like this should change the way it tasted, but it was all the same whatever color it looked like on the plate.  
  
“Where do they come from?” asked Terra. At least, that was what Ventus thought he asked. He was mumbling a bit around a bite of eggs.  
  
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. That is a question yet to be answered. They spawn from negative emotion, that much is certain, but they are not a natural phenomenon, or we would have seen them long before this. What do you learn from this?”  
  
The other boy was looking at Ventus again. Ventus wasn’t sure what to think about that. Everyone looked at people, though he forgot to sometimes. Maybe the look on the other boy’s face was normal for him, or maybe it meant something Ventus didn’t understand.  
  
“Did someone make them on purpose?” Terra said.  
  
Looking at people was hard. It was the way they looked back. Ventus felt like it was a question, a question he couldn’t usually answer. He didn’t even understand what the question was. There had to be one, though. The way the other boy looked at him was definitely a question.  
  
“It is possible.”  
  
“Why are there so many around the castle, though? What are they after?” Aqua asked.  
  
It wasn’t a very gentle question, like the ones in Aqua’s and Terra’s eyes when they looked at him. Ventus didn’t mind those questions, more and more. Terra and Aqua were nice, so their questions had to be too. The other boy didn’t have any nice questions, but he kept asking. Ventus wished he would ask out loud.  
  
“A higher concentration of monsters suggests two possible causes. Either they have been sent here for some purpose, or…?”  
  
“Or they’re coming from nearby. But, Master, no one here would…” said Aqua.  
  
The other boy stopped looking at Ventus. That made it easier to keep eating. He didn’t really like eating, but he had to do it. Everyone said so. He had to eat, or he would be hungry, and he really didn’t like being hungry. It made everything hard to do, especially thinking, and he had to do a lot of thinking.  
  
“I _didn’t_ bring them,” said the other boy.  
  
Thinking was difficult. It was still very shaky, most of the time. He was trying to go slowly, what Aqua called “baby steps”, but sometimes he forgot and tried to hurry ahead to the end of a thought, and then he got lost, the same way he got lost in the corridors, but inside his head.  
  
“They weren’t here before you showed up,” said Terra.  
  
“Well, that’s not my fault. They were other places. You just hadn’t seen them, because you’re lazy.”  
  
“Vanitas…” said Aqua.  
  
Ventus tried to pay attention enough to remember the other boy’s name. Vanitas. His name was Vanitas. It was a hard name to hold on to, for some reason. Other names were easier. He knew Terra and Aqua for sure. They said it was because he’d met them once before, right before he’d fallen asleep, but he didn’t remember that very well.  
  
“You _are_ ,” Vanitas said.  
  
“Vanitas…” Terra said.  
  
“Fine. You’re not lazy. You just got unlucky and missed them. Are you happy now?”  
  
He remembered some very confused things they said hadn’t happened, right at the start. There had been someone talking to him, and then he’d opened his eyes and looked up at the stars. He liked the stars. There were so many of them, but they didn’t go anywhere or do anything he had to remember. They were very comforting.  
  
“Such is your claim,” said Master Eraqus.  
  
After that, Ventus sort of remembered coming here. He’d been with someone else, someone he couldn’t remember but who wasn’t here now. Ventus was happy with that. He hadn’t liked that someone much, he didn’t think.  
  
“It’s the truth,” Vanitas said.  
  
He almost remembered Terra and Aqua, but things went very shaky indeed whenever he tried to think too hard about things that far back. But he knew they were friends, and not just because they told him so. They were his friends before that.  
  
“Be that as it may, where monsters of any sort congregate, it is a duty to drive them off and protect their target or discover their source, as the case may be,” Master Eraqus said.  
  
The other boy – Vanitas, Ventus reminded himself – stood up and left without saying anything to anyone. He did that a lot. Ventus didn’t understand why. Talking to people about little things like hellos and goodbyes was the easiest kind of talking. Even Ventus could do it. It wasn’t shaky at all.  
  
“Why do they keep coming back? There are always more,” said Terra.  
  
The others talked a lot, about all kinds of things. Ventus couldn’t keep up. He didn’t really understand what they were talking about, a lot of the time, and even when he started out understanding, sooner or later the words stopped meaning anything. That didn’t happen to other people. He could tell that much on his own. He’d asked Terra about it, but Terra had just ruffled his hair all the wrong direction and said that it would get better if Ventus gave it time.  
  
“They feed on negativity, recall. Therefore, they can replenish their numbers by seeking out new sources of ill feeling,” Master Eraqus said.  
  
A lot of things were going to get better if Ventus gave them time. He hoped they really did. Everyone was helping him because they hoped he would get better; he didn’t want to disappoint them. The shaky world bothered him, but not as much as it bothered them, he thought, even though they weren’t the ones living in it. Maybe it was because they weren’t the ones living in it that it bothered them so much. He didn’t care a lot of the time, until he tried to go somewhere and couldn’t remember the way.  
  
“Are there really so many negative emotions out there?” said Aqua.  
  
It also bothered him when he tried to think about something and couldn’t remember the way to that, but there were plenty of things to think about that he didn’t have to travel to, things like the pattern in the tablecloth or the sound of his fork clinking off his plate. Those things didn’t go anywhere.  
  
“It may seem daunting, but remember that for every Unversed you see, there are positive emotions that you do not, for they remain where they belong,” said Master Eraqus.  
  
He didn’t have much that wasn’t shaky, but it was more than he used to have, he thought. He remembered waking up without anything at all. Now he had the dining room, two friends, a teacher, and his name. That was something.  
  
“I understand, Master,” Aqua and Terra said.  
  
“Good. Then enough of this. Go and prepare yourselves for today’s lesson.”  
  
He wasn’t sure how he felt about his name. He knew that it was his, and everyone called him by it, but it didn’t feel quite right. It was just a little bit shaky when he thought of it, in a way that Terra’s and Aqua’s names weren’t, like it fit almost perfectly except for one little corner that was just too big or just too small. It felt like his name, and he knew that it meant him when people said it, but he felt like it wasn’t the name he wanted his friends to use every day. It was too long, he thought, when he considered it as closely as he could. He expected them to be done saying it, and his ears felt a little bit shaky when they weren’t.  
  
“Ventus?” Terra was bending over him. “Are you ready to go?”  
  
He nodded and stood, picking up his plate. He remembered where to put that when he was done. That was something.  
  
He thought he should probably tell Terra what he’d thought about. It would make things less shaky, if they started using the name he expected to hear.  
  
“…Ven,” he said carefully. “Call me Ven.”

* * *

 

  
  
He was starting to get used to being called Vanitas. He hated that, but even more he hated that the other boy didn’t even want to be Ventus. He was going by a nickname, by _his_ nickname, the one he’d let someone the other boy couldn’t even remember give him, the one he’d held close and secret for years, and now everyone was calling the other boy that. He kept jumping and turning around when someone was talking to the other boy. It was stupid, and he hated it.  
  
It made it sound like they were _friends_ , and they weren’t. He hadn’t given them permission to use that nickname. They were his jailers, even if they acted like they’d forgotten. _He_ couldn’t forget. They didn’t have a right to use his nickname.  
  
Of course, it wasn’t like that mattered to them. All of them thought they could help themselves to his things any time they liked. The other boy could use his body, the students could throw his name around like it meant nothing, the Master could pick through his memories.  
  
Well, at least he could prevent that last one. So far, the Master had stuck to asking questions and expecting to be answered without taking steps to make sure the answers were true, and he took full advantage of that. He answered as little as possible the questions about what his life had been like before that day. Most of the questions about after that day, he lied about. The Master seemed to swallow them readily enough. He really was a fool.  
  
He hadn’t heard from ( **the other Master** – _his Master_ ) Master Xehanort in weeks. Maybe he hadn’t been followed. Maybe this bright castle was a place not even someone as cunning as Master Xehanort would think to look for something like him.  
  
Or maybe Master Xehanort had found a new student and forgotten all about him.  
  
He kicked his legs morosely against the railing he was perched on. Behind him, Aqua and Terra were doing what passed around here for training: going through the same motions over and over against empty air, as though that was any kind of preparation for a real fight. He could just imagine the sneer on Master Xehanort’s face at how useless they were. How did Master Eraqus intend to produce actual warriors with such weak methods?  
  
The infuriating thing about it all was that he would be happy to do even that little, if he were allowed. But he wasn’t. The Master had forbidden him from joining the so-called ‘training sessions’. He was too dangerous – too dark, the Master meant. He was forbidden even to call his Keyblade, not that he had any intention of obeying. Alone in his bedroom in the dark, he could wrap his hand around the comforting weight and remind himself that he wasn’t defenseless. But where anyone else might see, he had to act as though he had never even touched a Keyblade.  
  
If they intended him to forget that he was a prisoner, they were going about it all wrong. He wasn’t allowed to use his Keyblade, nor join in the practices even when they were using wooden weapons, nor learn magic in their strange backwards way. The Master got angry any time Aqua and Terra didn’t know where he was right away. He hid anyway, whenever the constant push of unfriendly eyes got to be too much. He was making a map of the castle in bits and pieces, with all the best hiding spots marked. Soon they wouldn’t be able to find him if he didn’t want them to.  
  
At least the other boy didn’t get to train either. He was still too out of it to be given even a wooden model sword, in case he hit himself with it or something. Vanitas scoffed internally. If he hit himself, let him. He would learn not to. He’d always been a quick learner.  
  
The students were practicing alone: they were such goody-goodies that they kept working just the same even when the Master wasn’t watching. He was outside the castle, trying to thin the crowd of emotions that skittered around. It wasn’t working out very well for him so far. There was always another pain to replace the one he cut down.  
  
Vanitas tried not to flinch as another one met its end. He was getting good at not letting anyone notice it hurt, he thought. It wasn’t much of a challenge right now, when they couldn’t see his face, but he could always use practice.  
  
He had been getting a lot of practice at handling his emotions. It turned out that he could watch through their eyes, if he concentrated. It was strange and tiring, and as soon as his focus slipped he ended up dizzy from trying to see through a hundred eyes at once, but it let him spy on the Master on afternoons like this. That was worth something, although most of what he learned was new ways the Master would kill him if he got caught out in any of his lies. Still, it was useful. Master Xehanort would be pleased to discover this new skill, when he took him back.  
  
If he took him back. The thought jolted his mind out of the eyes of an envy and into a kaleidoscope of different points of view. By the time he got it down to one vision, the envy was destroyed. He didn’t feel like watching anymore, anyway. He could keep all the track of the Master he needed just by feeling how many invisible blows struck him. There were a lot: the Master was in a bad mood today, which might possibly be Vanitas’s fault for exploring the cellars instead of sitting obediently and boringly in the library all morning. He was paying for it now. It was worth it. They didn’t control him.  
  
It was good practice in another way as well. He’d been missing for weeks now. Master Xehanort would be beyond angry when he finally caught up with him and took him away. Unless – he couldn’t suppress the thought in time – he didn’t catch up at all. It was possible that Master Xehanort had ( **never looked for him** – _he wouldn’t do that_ ) given up on looking for him by now and gone to find a less troublesome student instead. He could find one. There was always another kid with the power who no one would miss. He’d been the one to tell him that, before that day, when he’d still been weak and refusing to fight – he stopped thinking about it before he could be sick. If he was sick here, with the Master so nearby, he would be caught for sure.  
  
More immediately, if he was sick here, he would fall off the railing, onto either the stone floor behind him or the entryway in front of him and a storey down. It could go either way, depending on how he collapsed. He wondered which would be better. If he was going to get caught, probably falling forward would be the best way, to take it out of their hands for good. That would be as good a way as any to get back at the Master.  
  
By the time he was finished with this line of thought, the memory and the sick feeling had both passed. So had most of the pain: the Master had slaughtered all the emotions he had time for and was heading back inside.  
  
Sure enough, the huge front door swung open to admit him less than a minute later. He didn’t seem to notice that Vanitas was there. That would have to be remedied. The Master didn’t like noticing him, not with the other boy around, but as the students were told when they complained about chores, doing things one didn’t like was a part of life.  
  
He called down, “Did you get anywhere?” and noted with a certain amount of gratification how many directions the Master looked before it occurred to him to look up at the railing.  
  
“What are you – Vanitas, get down from there at once!”  
  
“As you command.” The man probably meant him to climb back over the railing to the upper level, which was all the reason he needed to tilt forward instead, pushing off the rail into a flip that would take him down to the entryway floor, directly in front of the Master’s feet.  
  
It had been far too long since he’d done any real tumbling; he landed awkwardly, one ankle not quite straight enough, and staggered a few steps before regaining his balance. That was not quite the dazzlingly taunting display of acrobatic skill he’d intended it to be.  
  
“Vanitas!” That was Aqua. He wondered what it had looked like from where she was standing. She couldn’t have seen his mistake, at least.  
  
The Master looked sufficiently gobsmacked, anyway. Vanitas smirked at him. He hadn’t done anything remotely aggressive, but he could. He wanted the Master to know it.  
  
“What do you think you’re doing?!” The message had been received, clearly: the Master wasn’t as angry as when Vanitas actually did something wrong, but he was angry enough. He demanded that things be orderly, know their places and keep in them, no matter how uncomfortable those places were to be in. It was a Master thing, or possibly just an adult one.  
  
He heard the clattering of feet down the stairs too late to avoid Aqua when she all but tackled him, grabbing him firmly by the shoulders, Terra following close after her. “Vanitas, are you okay? What happened?”  
  
She was too close, but he was okay with that, he really was. He was okay right up until Terra crowded in next to her, and that made two pairs of hands grabbing at him ( **pushing and yanking and holding him still so the other person could hit him** ) –  
  
He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up in the corner, nor how his Keyblade had ended up in his hand. However he’d done it, he was pleased with himself: they would have to come at him one by one now, instead of all at once, and maybe he could get in some hits of his own before they overwhelmed him. His vision was dark, but that, he realized, was just his mask. He wasn’t sure where that had come from either, but it too was an advantage: they couldn’t see which of them he was watching. His eyes flickered from one to the next, trying to guess who would be first.  
  
The sickness snuck up on him this time. It washed over him in a wave, and when it was gone so was the panic – a small one, out on the mountain now. For once, feeling hollow was an improvement. It gave him his mind back, and he registered the confusion on all of their faces. They hadn’t been trying to hurt him.  
  
He quickly let go of his Keyblade and sent his mask away before that could change. He hadn’t even intended to break a rule that time, but he doubted the Master would care. Rules were rules, no excuses. He knew that. So much for showing off.  
  
Terra took a step toward him. He was being careful, of all things, more than he’d been a moment before when Vanitas had actually had a Keyblade to defend himself with. “Hey. It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”  
  
“I know that,” he lied. Terra said that a lot. It was deeply annoying: Terra didn’t like him, that much was obvious, but he kept insisting that nobody was going to hurt him, as though there were any reason to believe that, as though that were any kind of promise to make. Terra wouldn’t stop the Master if he decided Vanitas had broken one rule too many this time, so the words were meaningless lies.  
  
“Are you injured?” Aqua asked.  
  
Vanitas shook his head but otherwise ignored her. She wasn’t the one he had to worry about. It was the Master who was the dangerous one, who could decide on punishment, who was angry. When he looked, though, the Master didn’t look as angry as he had before the panic, which didn’t make any sense. Perhaps he was less angry because he’d been confirmed in thinking that Vanitas was no good and had to be gotten rid of?  
  
The look he gave Vanitas wasn’t smug either, though. He couldn’t identify it. “That was very reckless behavior, Vanitas. You gave them a fright.”  
  
He had? He thought about what Aqua might have seen. Watching him jump off the railing would have startled her, no doubt, but really frightened? That made very little sense. If he’d hurt himself, he would have been less trouble for her and everyone. He couldn’t keep sneaking off to places he wasn’t allowed if he was hurt.  
  
He shrugged. Either the Master was lying, or they all thought in ways that made no sense to him, or both. He was betting on both.  
  
“Go to your room and remain there for the rest of the day,” the Master ordered. “Think about what you did.”  
  
From the tone of his voice, that was meant to be a punishment. It wasn’t much of one. He could be bored as well in there as anywhere else. Besides, the Master didn’t know about his store of food. If he meant Vanitas to go hungry, he would have to try harder than that.  
  
He shrugged again and headed up the stairs. The Master followed him. So that was it, he thought. The Master didn’t want to punish him in front of Aqua and Terra for some reason, maybe because they would complain again, so he was taking him up to the bedroom for it. He felt around in his mind for his Keyblade, and then for the nearest force of his emotions. If it came down to that, he could try to get outside and use them as a distraction, while he went ( _home_ – **you don’t have a home** ) somewhere the Master couldn’t find him. He could do that. Hiding from a Master wasn’t as difficult as it sounded ( **as long as the Master in question wasn’t really looking** – _he is looking for you_ ).  
  
But the Master, to his surprise, didn’t set foot into the bedroom. He just shut the door behind Vanitas and clicked the lock closed, as though there were any point to a lock in this castle. It might keep the other boy out, but no one else was bothered by locks if they didn’t want to be. It certainly wouldn’t keep him in.  
  
If this was their idea of punishment, though, he might as well encourage it. Besides, the food was in here. He dug an orange out of the hiding place behind the bookshelf and started peeling it. Later, he could take advantage of not being watched to practice that strike Aqua had been using. They couldn’t stop him from getting stronger.

* * *

  
  
The first day Ven was allowed to train with them, Terra realized just how frightened Ven was by Keyblades, even his own. He was still sleepy a lot of the time, but as soon as Terra and Aqua got out their Keyblades to begin, all the sleep went out of his eyes to be replaced by a wariness that was far worse. He actually backed away from them, as though he thought they were about to turn on him.  
  
Terra got rid of his Keyblade immediately. From the corner of his eye, he saw Aqua do the same. “Ven? What’s wrong?”  
  
Ven shook his head like he was trying to clear it of a thought. “It’s nothing.”  
  
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Aqua said. Terra nodded. He’d seen Ven flinch away from Keyblades before, when they had been training and Ven had come along to watch, but Terra had thought that was only because he was still finding his feet. Ven had to know better by now, or Master Eraqus would never have said he was ready to join their practice.  
  
“No, really, it’s nothing,” Ven said. He didn’t sound sure, and after a second he added, “…I don’t get it.”  
  
“What? The Keyblade?” Terra asked. Maybe they were moving too fast, after all.  
  
“No, I mean…yes? Maybe? I don’t get why it makes me…nervous. It’s just you guys.”  
  
As glad as Terra was that Ven wasn’t afraid of them, it didn’t make him feel much better to know that Ven was scared for no reason he could remember. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”  
  
“I know!  But at the same time, I…don’t know.” Ven looked up from his feet. Now he looked really scared, not of the Keyblades but of himself, which was worse. “Is there something wrong with me?”  
  
“No.” That much, Terra could say for sure. Just looking at Ven, it was obvious there was nothing wrong with him now, whatever there might have been before. He was getting better all the time, more like a whole person than like a sleepwalker.  
  
“A Keyblade is born from a person’s heart,” Aqua said. Terra remembered this lesson from when they’d learned it. “Nothing more, and nothing less. There’s nothing in a Keyblade that wasn’t in its wielder’s heart. So you’re safe here, I promise, because our hearts would never hurt you.”  
  
Ven smiled. “I know,” he said.  
  
Still, Terra noticed that he spent the whole practice standing somewhere they couldn’t have hit him if they’d tried, and he didn’t use his own Keyblade once, though Terra knew he could.  
  
“I’m worried about Ven,” he said to Aqua later, when they were studying together in the library. Ven was napping – even then, he napped a lot – and he’d checked that Vanitas was in his room, so the two of them could talk in privacy.  
  
“Me too,” she agreed. “He’s still scared of us. Well, not us, but our Keyblades, even though that’s more or less the same thing.”  
  
Terra nodded. “He hasn’t used his since he woke up again. Do you think he forgot how?” If Ven had forgotten how to use his Keyblade, if he was nervous because he was hiding that fact for some reason, they could help him through it and everything would be okay. If he remembered how but didn’t want to…Terra wasn’t sure what they could do about that.  
  
“I don’t think so. He could just learn again; he learns fast.”  
  
It was true: now that Ven was properly awake, he was learning more and more every day. Master Eraqus said he learned fast because the skills he needed were things he had learned once, which were sealed with the memories in his heart. He didn’t have to learn most things for the first time, just remember them. Terra thought that was strange, because Ven couldn’t _remember_ anything, no matter how they tried to help him think back to before he’d come to the castle. It was like there was nothing there to remember, like he’d somehow managed to keep all his skills but lost the rest for good somewhere in his dreams.  
  
“Then…” He didn’t want to say what he was thinking.  
  
Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Aqua was thinking the same thing, and she nodded before he got his thoughts in order. “He’s scared of Keyblades, for some reason.”  
  
“Someone scared him,” Terra corrected her. “Someone with a Keyblade.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
The light streaming through the windows didn’t seem quite as warm, suddenly, as it usually did. The silence of the library felt oppressive, though it usually struck Terra as friendly. There shouldn’t be anything to fear from a Keyblade wielder, but Ven wouldn’t pretend to be afraid for no reason. Somewhere out there was someone with a Keyblade who’d scared Ven so badly that he remembered the fear when he didn’t remember anything else.  
  
Somewhere out there, or maybe somewhere very close. “Do you think, Vanitas…?”  
  
Aqua thought about it hard, while Terra tried not to. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to agree or not. If she agreed, they’d let someone who had hurt Ven stay in their home, had insisted on keeping him there and taking care of him. They had thought Vanitas was worth helping, and they’d been horribly wrong. If she didn’t agree, though, there was someone else out there, and it could be anyone, who had hurt Ven that badly and might do it again if they got a chance.  
  
“I don’t think so,” she said eventually. Terra let out a breath, whether of relief or disappointment he wasn’t sure. “He’s not powerful enough to fake being connected to Ven as deeply as he is. And he hasn’t hurt Ven since he’s been here, or we’d know. Besides, why would he?”  
  
Terra shrugged. If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that people whose hearts were consumed by darkness might do anything, for no reason that made sense to anyone else, just for the sake of hurting people. However, he said, “You’re right.” Vanitas was dark enough to be capable of anything, but he hadn’t used his darkness in weeks. And Ven didn’t seem afraid of him, not even vaguely: he never flinched from Vanitas the way he flinched from Terra as soon as a Keyblade was in his hand.  
  
At least he flinched from Aqua too, Terra thought, and then flushed in shame at having thought it. He didn’t want Ven to be frightened of Aqua. It bothered both of them more than they were admitting. If it were something about Terra that scared him, that would be better for everyone else. He should be able to wish for that. He wasn’t.  
  
“So what do we do?” he asked to take his mind away from such ignoble thoughts. “Should we tell the Master?”  
  
“He has to know already,” Aqua said. “It happens around him too. And maybe Ven will just get better on his own. He’s gotten better from so much already.”  
  
“Maybe.” The Master would know what was wrong. He would either tell them what to do about it, or handle it himself. If he hadn’t, it was because there was nothing to do but wait, again, for Ven to recover from…whatever had happened to make him so scared of a Keyblade.  
  
It wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, and he could tell that Aqua wasn’t satisfied by it either, but it was all they had.

* * *

 

  
  
Turning boredom into fire was starting to come easily to him. He leaned out his bedroom window so the smoke wouldn’t linger, incinerating the stupid, lying book on the glorious and onerous duties of a defender of the light one page at a time. He wanted to do the whole book at once and get rid of it, but he didn’t have anything else to do with his time while everyone else was training. He wasn’t allowed to watch.  
  
It was a stupid way to punish someone, but he had to admit that it was working. If the Master would just beat him and get it over with, it would be better than sitting here for hours and hours with nothing to do.  
  
At least he could make the Master’s stupid books pay for it. He tore out another page and glanced over it, then made a face. Being on fire was no less than it deserved for being such a huge, stinking lie. Power wasn’t responsibility. Power was power. Responsibility was a word that always happened to other people, when there was something that _someone else_ should be doing.  
  
It was a lie the students bought into, though, or at least they acted like it. The Master knew it was a lie, but even he pretended most of the time.  
  
He dropped the sheet of paper out the window, glared at it, and watched with a certain amount of satisfaction as it burst into a puff of flame. So much for that.  
  
Someone rapped on the door, and he nearly dropped the book out the window. “Vanitas?”  
  
It was Aqua. He hastily stashed the book, or what was left of it after a long afternoon of practice, down the side of the bed where hopefully she wouldn’t see it. “What?”  
  
“Can I come in?”  
  
Everyone always asked, as though there was some way for him to keep them out. He wondered what would happen if he said no to her, or, better, to the Master. Maybe they would take the door down so they could always see what he was doing. But then they wouldn’t be able to pretend to lock him in. “Whatever.”  
  
She looked around the room as though it smelled bad, even though it didn’t. He always took the food away as soon as it started to go bad. “You keep your room really clean, don’t you? Cleaner than mine.”  
  
He shrugged. “I guess.” He liked knowing where everything was. And when it was tidy, he could hide the things that mattered where no one else could find them, and they wouldn’t touch anything, because people liked things to be tidy as long as they didn’t have to make it that way. He’d thrown everything all over the room at first, to annoy them, but no one had said anything, and eventually it had started to get on his nerves.  
  
“Ven doesn’t.”  
  
Of course, every conversation had to come back to _him_ , if it didn’t start there. “Yes, he does.”  
  
“He doesn’t. He leaves things lying out all the time. You don’t.”  
  
“Stupid.” The other boy was going to get everything he valued taken away, and Vanitas would laugh. “What do you want?”  
  
“I wanted to talk to you.” She looked strange, like there was something she wanted to have talked about, but she didn’t want to actually go through the talking part.  
  
He went still. That kind of expression was bad news. “What is it?”  
  
Before she answered, he had time to go through a whole list of possibilities. They were going to kill him: not likely, after all this time and when he hadn’t done anything recently that they’d found out about, and the Master would have been the one to come for that. They were going to let him train with them: almost as unlikely, and the Master’s decision to make again. They’d found out about his emotions and were going to pour them all back into him to fix him: possible, since Masters had strange ways of finding things out, but they couldn’t fix him without putting him back where he belonged. They were going to put him back where he belonged at last: not possible, since they insisted so strongly that even if they could fix him, they wouldn’t for some reason. They were going to send him away: likely, for any number of reasons.  
  
They were going to send him away.  
  
He didn’t want to go. Not on their terms, anyway. He would rather run than be thrown out. At the very least, that would give him the opportunity to take some of the things he liked with him. Maybe burn down this room, give them something to remember him by. He thought he would do that one way or another. What were they going to do about it?  
  
“You remember what your life was like before, right?”  
  
The question was so unexpected that he forgot to hate her. “Yeah.” She might have forgotten how long the Master had spent ( _interrogating_ – **asking more nicely than he’d had to** ) trying to make him talk about where he’d come from and what had happened, but he hadn’t. He never could. It wasn’t like it was turning out to matter, in the end. They still treated the other boy like the real one. “So what?”  
  
She was nervous, still. He wondered if this was all she was bothering about. “And the things you remember happened to you and Ven both?”  
  
“Obviously, since we’re the same _person_.” The fact that the other boy had ( **gotten off lucky** – _been weak_ ) let all the memories go to Vanitas didn’t make them different.  
  
“But you’re not the same now.”  
  
“What, because I don’t have anything better to do than clean up and he’s too tired all the time to bother?” She and Terra kept bringing up any little difference as though it was proof positive that he wasn’t connected to the other boy at all. It was getting on his nerves.  
  
“Because you’re not scared of Keyblades, and he is. Or are you?” She looked at him searchingly.  
  
He laughed. “Scared? Me? I like my Keyblade just fine. It’s not my fault you lot won’t let me use it.” As for the other boy, he probably couldn’t use one at all. That was another thing that had gotten split in two.  
  
She didn’t look convinced. “What about other people’s?”  
  
Her Keyblade flashed into her hand, and he ducked. The window was open, he thought. He could get to it and out. The fall wouldn’t kill him, might not even hurt him too badly to get away, and she wasn’t the Master: she would be slowed if not stopped by his emotions. Or he could drive her off, maybe, give himself a minute, which was all he would need to grab the bag of food and supplies he’d hidden, and then out.  
  
All these thoughts flashed through his head in less than a second. After that second, he realized that he hadn’t been attacked. She was holding her Keyblade in a guard position for some reason. Was it her plan to make him attack her, and then kill him for it? He still didn’t know what she wanted out of him. Maybe she’d gotten it without his noticing.  
  
Aqua dismissed her Keyblade before another full second had passed. “That’s what I thought.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You don’t act like you’re scared, but you are. I didn’t attack you. Why would I do that?”  
  
“I don’t know why you do anything,” he complained. Was this some kind of joke, or test, or both? He didn’t think it was very funny, and it looked like she thought he was failing.  
  
“Vanitas! I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to know for sure, and now I do: you get nervous around Keyblades too, only you don’t mind yours.”  
  
He rolled his eyes. “You pulled a weapon unexpectedly. What did you _think_ I was going to do, give you a hug?”  
  
“A Keyblade isn’t just a weapon,” she began. It was going to be an incredibly inane spiel about virtue and light and other things he didn’t have, he could already tell.  
  
He cut her off. “Blah blah manifestation of the inner self blah blah, I know already.” He did, too. There wasn’t much to do but read. Some of the books he didn’t want to set on fire. “And then you hit people with it. In the real world, we call that a weapon.”  
  
She was giving him a look he couldn’t read but was sure he didn’t like. “No one who deserves a Keyblade would ever use it for base ends.”  
  
He rolled his eyes again. His eye muscles were getting more exercise than all the rest of him combined. “It’s still a weapon.”  
  
“But Ven’s not nervous about the practice weapons.”  
  
He laughed. He’d seen the wooden “practice weapons” in use and laughed then, too. No wonder they were all so slow. “Not even _he_ could be scared of those. I don’t think any of you could do serious harm with those if you tried.” Master Xehanort could, he thought despite himself. Master Xehanort could do serious harm with anything. It was ( **terrifying** – _awe-inspiring_ – **painful** ) impressive. He shook his head to get the thought out. He tried not to think about Master Xehanort much these days. It was too confusing.  
  
“We would never hurt him!”  
  
“So what?” Not even the other boy could be so stupid as to believe that. Or could he? Vanitas wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as though he was in any position to try believing it himself. Maybe they really wouldn’t hurt the other boy. They acted so very fond of him.  
  
Aqua was giving him a confused look. It was really ugly on her. He sighed in exasperation, stuffed that feeling back inside himself, and explained. It was the only way to get her to back off, clearly. “He’s being a wimp, that’s all, scared of a few bruises. He’ll get over it, or not. Either way, it’s his problem. Get him to toughen up, if you care so much.”  
  
“…That’s it?”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
She favored him with a skeptical look this time. He was accumulating quite the collection. “You don’t know why he’s scared?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Okay, then. Dinner’s in an hour. Don’t be late this time! It’s your turn to help set up.”  
  
“Whatever.” He was going to be on time. If he didn’t do the stupid chores they assigned him, he wouldn’t get dinner. While he could easily steal it from the kitchen in the night, it was better warm. At least something in this castle was predictable.  
  
Aqua shut the door behind her. He slowly made himself relax. She was gone. It was all right. She hadn’t known he was lying. He wasn’t being thrown out.  
  
He reached under the bed and pulled out the fear that was cowering there. That had been too close. She might have seen it escape, and then he would really have been in trouble. Leaning out the window again, he checked that no one could see and then tossed the fear down to the courtyard.  
  
It was her fault, anyway, for being naïve and nosy. They really were ridiculously soft here. He hadn’t even seen the Master hit them hard enough to knock them down, even when they should have been able to stop him if they’d been doing the block right. Maybe she genuinely didn’t understand that people who weren’t that weak would hit her. He had half a mind to hit her once or twice, just to teach her some basic survival skills. If she drew on him again, he would. And then get beaten half to death by the Master, but it would be worth it.  
  
He didn’t have any boredom left, but annoyance worked even better for starting fires. He dug the book out again and ripped out the next page.  
  


* * *

  
  
Ven getting better had its downsides, Aqua thought. For one thing, it turned out that he was very curious and completely reckless in his pursuit of curiosity. At least he had an excellent sense of balance, which had so far managed to keep him safe from the consequences of said recklessness. That didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking to watch, though.  
  
“Ven! Get down from there!”  
  
He didn’t merely ignore her; he waved from his perch on one of the upper windowsills. Since the window directly behind him was still shut, he must have climbed out some other way entirely. Perhaps he’d come down from the roof, where some of the attics let out. She wouldn’t have put it past him to have gone up a chimney or something like that.  
  
“Ven!”  
  
Apparently this window was no longer interesting enough, as Ven moved on toward another. Aqua watched anxiously. She’d never really noticed before that the window ledges wrapped all the way around the castle. Ven was apparently bent on discovering this fact for himself, if a misstep didn’t send him crashing to the ground first.  
  
“What is he doing?”  
  
She didn’t turn around to answer Master Eraqus. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Ven, even for a second. “I don’t know. He won’t come down.”  
  
“This exploratory habit is getting rather out of hand,” said the Master.  
  
Aqua thought that this was rather understating the case. “I don’t even know how he got up there! Or what he thinks he’s doing. Doesn’t he know he could fall?”  
  
“Perhaps he doesn’t. I’ve been told it’s a lesson all children insist on learning for themselves, at some point. There’s no way of preventing it.”  
  
“But from _that high_? Master, he’ll get hurt!” She flexed her fingers and tried to run through the form for extending a barrier to someone else, but she was uneasily sure that she couldn’t do it reliably at the best of times, and she’d never managed it in as short a time as it would take Ven to hit the ground.  
  
Master Eraqus rested his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Risking a glance to the side, she saw that he was holding his Keyblade at the ready and watching Ven’s progress as carefully as she was. “I will see to it he comes to no harm. Don’t be afraid.”  
  
She nodded and tried not to be.  
  
Ven didn’t fall, of course. She was torn between hoping that he never would and wishing that he would fall once or twice from a merely moderate height, before he started thinking he was invincible.  
  
When he had successfully circled all the way around the castle and climbed back in the one open window on that storey, Aqua breathed a sigh of relief not unmixed with further apprehension. “What’s he going to do _next_?”  
  
Master Eraqus didn’t seem overly concerned as he gestured for her to resume her practice stance. “You will find out when he does it, and not before.” Undoubtedly seeing on her face that she found this poor comfort, he continued, “He will get into trouble, but he will not be trouble. That much is true, and it is more than can be said of some.”  
  
“I wish he wouldn’t get into trouble at all,” Aqua grumbled. “Being trouble might be easier to deal with.” If Ven had been climbing around the outside of the castle for the sake of frightening her, she would have known how to feel, rather than all her emotions being jumbled up this way.  
  
“You would rather have two of Vanitas?” the Master said with a dark look, resuming the attacks she was supposed to be repelling.  
  
She blocked the first two strikes of the sequence with her Keyblade, but she didn’t get into position for the third fast enough, and it tapped her on the thigh. “Vanitas isn’t so bad,” she said defensively. He was obnoxious on purpose, he acted strangely, and he threw fits when someone paid what he thought was too much attention to Ven…but he could be worse. She thought. Somehow.  
  
“He is one with the darkness,” Master Eraqus said. “His obsession with Ventus rules him. Of such obsession is the road to darkness made.”  
  
“I know, Master.” She tried the blocks again, and this time all three worked perfectly, though she wasn’t sure why it had worked this time when it had failed before.  
  
“Well done! Again.”  
  
This time the third counter-strike failed again. Aqua ran through the motions in her head, trying to see what she had done right that one time and never again. Perhaps she just needed to be faster.  
  
Speed wasn’t the key, she discovered as Master Eraqus’s Keyblade tapped her on the thigh again. Even with so little strength behind it, she was going to have a bruise there. It was starting that ache that meant she’d let herself get hit in the same place too many times in a row.  
  
As she tried again, she felt someone staring at her, like a prickle running over her skin. She looked up over Master Eraqus’s shoulder, then further up, at the row of windows where their bedrooms were. She didn’t have much time to look before she needed all her attention to attempt the sequence again, but she did catch a flash of movement at one of the windows and a glimpse of gold eyes.  
  
So Vanitas was watching again. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. He was free to look out his window if he wanted, of course, and it wasn’t as though they were doing anything even the smallest bit secret. Still, it was unnerving to know he was there watching but pretending not to. It made her feel like she was doing something secret, or like he was plotting something. She didn’t think he was, though. He just liked watching their training.  
  
It would be far less creepy if he would just admit that he was observing. He could sit on the steps or something, and then Aqua could ask what he thought about the techniques they were learning without him insisting that he had no idea what she was talking about. That would be nice. He didn’t seem to have anything to talk about that wasn’t sneering. Apparently the books in the library were universally derisible, and the theory lessons he was allowed to sit in on were even worse. It made her feel very tired sometimes, trying to talk to him and getting nothing back.  
  
She managed to pull off the third block twice more before the end of the lesson, but she still couldn’t see quite what the difference was between success and failure. Maybe Vanitas had seen, but if he had, she wasn’t going to be able to get him to tell her about it. She didn’t have the energy to try today.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
He didn’t watch their pathetic excuses for training sessions as much as he had before, when the other boy hadn’t been allowed to join them either. Now every time the ( _two and a half_ ) three of them gathered together to go over what they’d learned, it reminded Vanitas that he wasn’t allowed. Even though he was the real one, the strong one, he wasn’t allowed to practice defending himself. He was going to be weaker than ever by the time they ( **kicked him out** ) let him go.  
  
Maybe that was what they wanted, he considered. If they weakened him, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to them when it was time. That made sense. Crippling him was the kind of thing which they could pretend was a kindness, but which would keep him from succeeding at any of ( _his_ – **the old man’s** ) the plans to get rid of them.  
  
He watched sometimes anyway, when he didn’t feel too trapped in skin and bone and blood to sit quietly, no matter how interesting or useful it would be.  
  
Those days were more frequent as time went by. He ran, sometimes, when all the others were training and no one would catch him. There was enough castle to run in for a long time without passing the same room twice, and he knew where everything was now. As long as he didn’t lose track of time and get caught out, he could go anywhere. That made the ache bearable, made him feel less like he was going to vibrate out of this body and into the air.  
  
This was one of the calm days. He’d managed to run himself into exhaustion yesterday and so had slept well for once. The ache of being apart from his body was barely distinguishable from the ache in his muscles. He liked when that was the case; it was easier for him to pretend he was whole. So he was watching them all from a corner by the door. They didn’t seem to mind, though he was fairly sure the other boy just hadn’t noticed him there.  
  
The Master was practicing with Aqua again, the same combination she kept getting wrong, even though it was so obvious how it should go. Vanitas had practiced it on his own as best he could, and he was sure that he could manage it much better than she was doing. That left Terra with the other boy, and that was disgustingly dull but still more interesting to watch than Aqua failing at the same counter-strike twelve times in a row.  
  
The other boy was using a wooden sword, of course, but this one was different from the others. This was actually made to look like a Keyblade, and either Terra signed all his work in the most obnoxious possible way, or it had once belonged to him. Vanitas smirked. He could believe either one, really. Or both.  
  
It was pointless, anyway. Why give someone a fake Keyblade who was never going to be able to use a real one? They should give up on a lost cause and focus on teaching the other boy to use a normal weapon. Not that Vanitas cared, one way or the other. Once he’d found out what was keeping him from his body, he would be whole again, and it wouldn’t matter what the other boy had or hadn’t learned.  
  
The thought didn’t comfort him as much as it had.  
  
Anything would be worth making his emotions stay put, though. It was getting harder and harder to hide them. If he were whole, he wouldn’t have to. When he’d been whole, his emotions had stayed inside him no matter how strong they got. He remembered that. It didn’t seem to happen to the other boy, either. Like so much else, that hadn’t been halved. The other boy had what he needed to stop leaking emotions everywhere.  
  
He decided not to think about that at the moment. There were a lot of things he had resolved not to think about more than he could help. Most of those were things that made him feel too strongly, in awkward ways or at the wrong times. If he didn’t think about them, he didn’t have to feel anything, and the feelings couldn’t escape.  
  
He returned his attention to the practice room. Terra wasn’t hitting the other boy at all, even when he completely failed to dodge. Vanitas scoffed. How was he supposed to learn? Terra _wanted_ the other boy to learn. It was just Vanitas who wasn’t allowed to.  
  
That was a stupid way to behave. Vanitas was the real one, the one who remembered, the one who was strong. If anyone was getting trained, it should have been him. But they were just barely too smart for that. They knew he was a threat, and they were afraid of what he would do if they didn’t make him weak.  
  
They treated the other boy like a completely different person. That was the stupidest thing about it. They were stupid about everything, except the one thing that might work in Vanitas’s favor. The other boy got to learn. Even though Vanitas was the one with the Keyblade, they bent over backwards to give the other boy something to use. No one had ever suggested that Vanitas could use a wooden sword if he wasn’t allowed to use a Keyblade. No one had ever suggested that Vanitas might need to defend himself from something other than them one day.  
  
Out on the practice floor, the other boy lost his grip on the fake Keyblade. He was trying to block with it straight on, as though he could ever truly block even a weak, pretend attack from someone so much bigger. Vanitas knew better. He would have deflected it to one side and then ducked in close. That was the way to handle a stronger attacker. Terra couldn’t teach anyone speed, the big idiot.  
  
The wooden sword went skittering across the floor towards Vanitas’s observation corner. Smirking, he picked it up. Let the other boy try to defend himself with no weapon. He was never going to be anything but weak. Now Vanitas had a weapon, one nobody had forbidden him from using. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing, and it made them all nervous to see him armed.  
  
He looked up to a flash of light and the other boy –  
  
The other boy counter-attacked Terra perfectly with the bronze Keyblade in his hand.  
  
His Keyblade.  
  
Vanitas’s vision went dark as his mask slid down over the face that wasn’t his. He leapt at the face that was. The other boy hadn’t been expecting it, but that was no surprise; he never expected anything. Vanitas hit him in the chest with his full body weight and they went over, smacking into the floor, Vanitas barely managing to shift his weight before he tumbled over.  
  
His Keyblade was still in the other boy’s hand, and he was swinging it now, he was swinging it _at Vanitas_ , and somewhere inside the fear went to hollow went to anger went to hollow went to anger again, faster than he could track if he’d been trying, but he wasn’t. His mind was entirely focused on his Keyblade, on grabbing it and prying it out of the other boy’s hand.  
  
It was just the same Keyblade as the one he’d first called, ages ago now, before the old man had found him. He hadn’t known what it was then, but it had fit into his hand perfectly, every time. It still did. The curves and contours of the grip were his, they were made for him, of him. It was always meant for his hands. He’d been perfectly willing to use it as a weapon at first, he remembered, when he didn’t know what it was for, what he was for. It was only after that that he’d stopped. He’d refused. He hadn’t wanted to be what his Master asked of him, so he’d refused to fight, but the Keyblade had still come. He’d held it so often, in the night when there was no one there to see. It had been a comfort, the only thing in the world that no one could take away, no matter what he did or refused to do. And then he’d lost it. He’d changed too much, his Master had explained, the first time he’d reached out in the old familiar way and gotten something new and unfamiliar back. He’d changed until the old Keyblade didn’t fit him anymore. But the old man had been wrong, because his hand slipped into the reverse grip like it had never been away. That hand always felt a little emptier than the other, because this Keyblade wasn’t there. This Keyblade completed his hand.  
  
It slipped away like dust and reappeared in the other boy’s hand, and Vanitas screamed.  
  
It couldn’t be! The other boy was doing this somehow, keeping him from his Keyblade, just like he kept him from his body, but this was worse, so much worse. How dare he? How dare he hold Vanitas’s Keyblade like it was part of his hand, when it wasn’t. It wasn’t!  
  
He was hitting the other boy, feeling the blows on his own sense of himself. He didn’t care that it hurt, or that he was bleeding darkness into the air. He just cared that the other boy kept holding onto that Keyblade like it belonged to him, and Vanitas had to make him stop.  
  
The fire pulled from his rage took form around his empty, empty right hand, brighter and stronger than it had ever burned before. He could burn out the space between him and what was his. He could burn everything, burn both of them, and then maybe then he would be able to take his Keyblade with him to wherever real people went after that. He was the real one. The other boy wouldn’t be there.  
  
Ice formed over his hand, quenching the flame, at the same time as strong arms pulled him away from the other boy. The other boy was staring, just staring, but he was holding Vanitas’s Keyblade in a blocking position still.  
  
“Let go! Give it back! Give it back, give it back, _give it back_! It’s mine! It’s mine!”  
  
Vanitas became aware that it was his voice screaming, over a chorus of “What are you doing?” and “Get away from him!” from the other three.  
  
Someone – Terra – was holding him pinioned, unable to reach his Keyblade, and no matter how hard he willed it, his Keyblade stayed where it was. He reached with his mind until it hurt, but it wouldn’t come. The only one that wanted to listen was the other Keyblade, but he didn’t want it. It was only a fake, like the other body, and he was the real one. He was. He was!  
  
“Ventus, leave now! Go somewhere safe.” That was the Master’s voice. Vanitas realized with a new, leaden feeling that the Master had seen, had heard, but the Master wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t care. He never cared. He had been waiting for a reason to hurt Vanitas, and now he had one. He wouldn’t care that the other boy had taken Vanitas’s Keyblade and kept it from him, any more than he cared that the other boy had taken Vanitas’s body and kept _that_ from him.  
  
The other boy left, taking Vanitas’s Keyblade with him. Vanitas couldn’t use his frozen right hand, but he kept trying anyway, kept reaching with it until the Keyblade was gone.  
  
“You took it! You took it from me! Bring it back! Bring – it – back!”  
  
He could feel his emotions boiling up inside him, preparing to escape all at once, more than he could hope to hide. He had to get away before that happened. It was a habit by now, to run when he felt himself about to get sick. He didn’t have to think about it.  
  
“Vanitas, stop it! Calm down!”  
  
He ignored Terra’s words. Words didn’t matter. Only getting away mattered. He relaxed for a moment, then thrashed wildly as soon as the arms around him stopped gripping so hard, but it was no good. Terra kept holding on and talking in his ear, saying words he didn’t care about.  
  
“Cease this at once!” The Master was angry. The Master was really and truly angry. He hadn’t been that angry even when he’d been going to kill Vanitas.  
  
Something inside Vanitas snapped, the world twisted the way his mind twisted sometimes when he thought about the wrong things, and he found himself free. Without thinking about it, he took off running, out the door of the practice room, down the stairs, down more stairs, around the corner – he had to get outside before the sickness caught him.  
  
It seemed to take forever, running and running while the sick feeling roiled higher and higher inside him, but he knew everything there was to know about the castle, and he made it to a side door in time to burst through it and onto the slope of the mountain. His emotions were everywhere here. It was safe to curl up in the shadow of the stone and lie there helpless while the chimera unfolded itself from his heart.  
  
The draining of his emotions came as a relief, the way really being sick was sometimes, when it meant that the worst was over. The hollow in the center of him hurt distantly like always, but it was better than the alternative. He couldn’t be sick like this twice. Or could he?  
  
He had to keep moving. If they followed him, if they saw him here surrounded by his emotions, they would know. He didn’t know what they would do when they found out that they weren’t going to do anyway, but there was always a way to make it hurt worse.  
  
He staggered to his feet and started up the mountain. That was as good a direction as any. There were bound to be places where he could hide. They would stop looking for him, and if they didn’t, he could try somewhere else. There was always somewhere else.  
  
The emotions tried to block his path. He couldn’t focus well enough to make them all go away. Instead, he flexed his newly-thawed hand and his – the other Keyblade fell into it. He retched, seeing it, bleeding a new hatred, but swung it anyway.  
  
Every one he killed left two or three in its place, but he kept going, up the mountain.  
  
The problem with his choice, he discovered several hours later, was that he hadn’t had a chance to explore the mountaintop before, while his pursuers had. He should have hidden in the castle. He’d planned for that. If he hadn’t panicked, he could have been gone along with everything he needed.  
  
Instead, he was being found. At least it wasn’t by the Master.  
  
“Vanitas?” It was Aqua. That might be worse. She was the smart one, and she was fast. He might not be able to get away, even if he could get past her. That was the problem with hiding in caves.  
  
“Vanitas, come out of there!”  
  
He refused on principle, that principle being that if she wanted to hurt him, she was going to have to come in and risk having him hurt her back. He might not be able to stop her, but he didn’t have to make it easy for her.  
  
“What _happened_?” she asked, sounding exasperated, not angry, but then none of those people acted angry like normal people did. “Why did you attack Ven like that?”  
  
He should have stayed silent. Anything she knew was a power she had over him. He should fight against giving her that power. He should… “He had my Keyblade.”  
  
“Your Keyblade? You mean Ven’s Keyblade used to be yours?”  
  
“No!” he shouted. “It’s _my_ Keyblade! It never was his! He doesn’t even _have_ one!” He hadn’t, until he’d stolen one from Vanitas. That was true. He was sure.  
  
“But, Vanitas…” she said, in that weird gentle voice that meant she was going to hurt him anyway. “You can’t just steal someone’s Keyblade. Not even if you’re connected the way you and Ven are.”  
  
“You don’t know that!”  
  
“I know I’ve never seen you use that Keyblade, but it’s the only one I’ve ever seen Ven use. It’s his.”  
  
“It’s not! _It’s not_!” He managed to turn the jumble of hectic feelings into a burst of fire instead of letting it run away. “It’s _mine_! I had it _first_! He can’t have it! He can’t! I won’t let him!” He couldn’t keep his breathing even. She had to be able to hear him choking on his own breath, but he couldn’t make himself stop.  
  
“You mean you had it before you were split from Ven?”  
  
“ _He_ was split from _me_! I’m the real one! He’s just a thief!” He’d stolen Vanitas’s name and Vanitas’s body and Vanitas’s Keyblade, and there was nothing Vanitas could do about any of them.  
  
He was the real one. He had to be. Otherwise…Otherwise they were right about him, and they couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t let them.  
  
He was the one who deserved to exist.  
  
He was the one who was willing to fight for it. That was the only thing that mattered. Nothing else was important, when it came right down to it. That was all he had, when it came right down to it.  
  
“I’m the real one,” he repeated. His voice didn’t sound like his, like either of his. It was too thick and choked with things he tried not to feel.  
  
There was nothing in the cave left that would burn, but he set the fire anyway. It didn’t make the closeness of his throat go away, but it kept the sick feeling at bay, and that was good enough.  
  
“Vanitas…You can both be the real one, can’t you? You’re the real Vanitas. Isn’t that better than one of you having to go away?”  
  
“It’s not! It’s just not!” He wanted to tell her why not, but he couldn’t. She couldn’t be allowed to know why it was so important to take the other boy back again. ( **It didn’t seem nearly as important to the other boy to take him back, he’d noticed** – _because the other boy was a thief who’d already stolen everything he could._ ) That was a secret. It had to be. He had a lot of secrets; they were the only things no one had taken away yet.  
  
“If you say so.” She didn’t believe him, but that was okay. If she believed him, she would ask questions. He couldn’t have both. That wasn’t how it worked. And his secrets were more important.  
  
The worst part of everything was that the Keyblade he’d had since that day, the one he’d found himself holding every time he tried to call his Keyblade, fit into his palm perfectly. He’d thought, all this time, that it was the same Keyblade, just changed the way he had been changed. But apparently it wasn’t. ( **The old man** – _the other boy_ ) they had found a way to take the one thing he’d been sure he could count on to always be there, to always be his, no matter what happened.  
  
No matter how brightly the fire burned, fed on his emotions, the heat couldn’t reach his tears; they pooled disgustingly on the inside of his mask. He tugged it off and dropped it with a clatter . Aqua didn’t say anything about that sound, nor the other sounds she had to be able to hear. That made it easier to pretend nothing was happening.  
  
“What are you going to do to me?” he asked eventually. If she was going to kill him, he wished she’d done it already, before he’d humiliated himself.  
  
“You’re in trouble,” she said seriously, as though he could possibly not be aware, “but it’ll be okay. Come back and say you’re sorry and promise not to do it again, and you’ll be grounded for a while. That’s all, I promise.”  
  
She might be lying. More likely, she might be being lied to. The Master surely wouldn’t let him get away with this without some real punishment.  
  
He uncurled from his corner of the cave anyway. He might as well get it over with, one way or another. He could run away properly, if he had to. He left the mask where it lay.  
  
On the way down the mountain, he threw fire at his emotions while Aqua cut them down. She probably thought he was wincing because of what had just happened. She didn’t ask, though, and he didn’t tell.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Ven couldn’t help being curious about Vanitas. Everyone else here was friendly, and everything made sense after one explanation, except for him. Terra said Vanitas thought he was part of Ven, because they were connected in a way no one really understood, but why would he think that? His heart was full of darkness, Aqua said, so what was he doing here, in a castle so full of light? He had a Keyblade, as Ven had seen for himself, so why wasn’t he training with them?  
  
It was a question, and Ven liked finding out the answers to questions. Besides, Vanitas was avoiding him, ever since he’d flipped out at Ven over his Keyblade, and Ven didn’t like being avoided.  
  
Vanitas wasn’t too hard to find, in the end. He spent a lot of time in the library when he wasn’t being confined to his room for being horrible, said Aqua when Ven asked her, and sure enough, Vanitas was there when Ven went to look. It still took a few minutes, because he wasn’t sitting in a chair, but down under a table right at the back of the room. Anyone else might have missed him, but Ven didn’t. It felt to him like he should look under that table, so he did, and sure enough, Vanitas was there, balancing a thick book on his knees.  
  
“What are you doing under there?” Ven asked first instead of any of the questions he’d come here to ask.  
  
“Reading. What does it look like?”  
  
“But why are you reading under the table?”  
  
Vanitas glared at him. “Because I want to. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”  
  
Ven thought about it. Training was over for the day, for him at least, and it wasn’t nearly time for dinner yet. “Nope!”  
  
“…That was a hint, idiot.”  
  
Ven decided to ignore that. He knew perfectly well that it was a hint that he should go away. That was why he was there. Only when he’d thought it out beforehand, it had sounded less rude. He refused to be distracted. “Why don’t you like me?”  
  
That got Vanitas to stop pretending to read and blink at him. His eyes kind of glowed in the dark, Ven realized. Maybe the corner under the table wasn’t as dark to him as it was to Ven. “Why do you _think_?”  
  
“I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking. It’s not my fault we’re connected.” It wasn’t fair, either, for Vanitas to be avoiding him over something he couldn’t help. It wasn’t like there were a lot of people around for either of them to hang out with instead.  
  
“Connected?” Ven must have said something wrong, because Vanitas sounded angry, and now he was glaring over his book. “Is that all they told you, that we’re _connected_?”  
  
“Um…y-yeah?” It looked like Vanitas wanted to fight, but Ven didn’t want to fight him, and not just because he would probably lose. The entire point of this conversation was to not fight. He didn’t want to be Vanitas’s enemy, even if that was what Vanitas seemed to want.  
  
“We’re not ‘connected’. You _are_ me. There’s nothing about you that you didn’t steal from me. _That’s_ the truth. And it _is_ your fault.”  
  
“That’s not true!” It couldn’t be true. He trusted his friends, a lot more than he trusted Vanitas, for sure. He was Ven. He’d had an accident and lost his memory, but he was getting better. He was almost all the way better now. He still didn’t remember anything from before, and he still felt a weird all-over ache for no reason, but that was all. He hadn’t stolen that from anyone.  
  
Vanitas scoffed at him, “How do you know? Did they _tell_ you that? They should know better. I told them, right at the start. They know everything. They’re just lying to you.”  
  
“They’re not! Why would they?” Terra and Aqua were his friends. They wouldn’t lie to him.  
  
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know why you perfect light people do any of the things you do. They like you, but they lie to you. They don’t like me, but they don’t do anything about it. You’ll never get anywhere trying to understand them.”  
  
Ven blinked. That didn’t sound like his friends at all. “They like you,” he objected. “And if you were me, they would have to like you. They’re my friends.”  
  
“I’m not you. You’re me. Get it right,” said Vanitas. Ven didn’t see the difference. Either way, he was saying that they were the same. “And that just shows how dumb you are. They don’t like me _because_ you’re me. They think you’re the real one, because you’re weak like them.”  
  
“I’m not weak!” Neither were his friends. They were the strongest people he could imagine existing anywhere. “And I am real!” He knew he was real. Real was arguing about chores, learning magic, practicing with the others. Real was laughing at each other’s jokes, being given a hand up when he fell, talking about their dreams. Real was the way his heart felt so full when he thought about Terra and Aqua that he thought it would burst. He’d never seen Vanitas do any of that. “If anyone’s not real, it’s you!”  
  
“I am not!” Vanitas rolled out from under the table and jumped to his feet. They were the same height, but Vanitas was trying to stand up taller, like he thought it was a contest or something. “I was here before you. I’m the one who _remembers_ , and you don’t even know what you forgot!”  
  
“You – remember?” That couldn’t be true. He had to be lying. Ven still had his memories, sleeping in his heart. He’d just lost the way to reach them. Vanitas couldn’t have had them all this time.  
  
Vanitas saw his hesitation and smirked. “I remember everything. I could tell you something only I would know, but it wouldn’t help you, would it? You wouldn’t know if it was true or not, because you’re just a thief and a copy. And that’s all you’ll ever be!”  
  
He turned on his heel and took a step away, but Ven didn’t want to leave the argument there. He caught Vanitas by the wrist, and Vanitas froze.  
  
So did Ven. He had touched Vanitas before, once, but only while Vanitas was trying to hit him, and so he hadn’t been paying much attention at the time. He had never touched him deliberately, with nothing else to get in the way.  
  
He could feel things he shouldn’t be able to. He felt his hand on his own wrist, grabbing a little too tightly to be comfortable. That was strange enough, but he felt _annoyed_ by that grip. He felt a deeply-buried emptiness, full of hunger and nothing else, not even a hint of light, of anything at all. He felt a slew of tiny pin-pricks of pain coming from somewhere else. He felt torn in different directions. He wanted to run away. He wanted to come closer. He wanted to attack. He wanted to scream. He didn’t know what he wanted.  
  
He let go, after a second or an hour, he wasn’t sure. The first thing he noticed was a resumption of the faint ache he’d gotten used to in his bones, which alone of all the pains had stopped when he’d been touching Vanitas. He’d always thought the ache was in his bones, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was in someone else’s instead.  
  
“You’re hurt,” he said incoherently. Already everything was starting to retreat from his senses, leaving him more or less the same, except that now he knew Vanitas wasn’t lying.  
  
“Thank you so much for that information. I never would have guessed.” Vanitas sounded much less shaken. It wasn’t fair, for him to be shrugging it off when Ven wasn’t, couldn’t.  
  
“No, but – why? What hurt you?” It wasn’t a pain he remembered from his life at the castle. He remembered falling, dodging too slowly, shutting his hand in the window, dropping a telescope on his foot. He remembered feeling lost, sometimes, and lonely, and worried. He didn’t remember anything like this.  
  
“You did,” Vanitas said.  
  
Ven reeled back. He’d hurt Vanitas? He hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t even known until now. It was no wonder Vanitas didn’t like him. “How? I didn’t – I didn’t do anything to you.”  
  
Vanitas rolled his eyes. He was facing Ven again, though Ven didn’t remember him turning back. It must have happened while he’d been overwhelmed by feeling. “You existed, didn’t you? That’s plenty.”  
  
“But why? I don’t get it. Why don’t you hurt me too?”  
  
“…I don’t know,” Vanitas said after a long silence. “It just doesn’t work like that. I don’t know what they did to keep you in my body.”  
  
“Your body?” Ven looked down at himself: his hands, his feet, everything he thought of as his. Was this a lie too? No, it felt real, more real than Vanitas had by far. “But this is _my_ body.”  
  
“No, it’s not! It’s mine. It used to be mine, and then – you took it, and then they did something so I can’t get it back.”  
  
It should have been frightening, hearing someone say that he wanted to take Ven’s body, but it wasn’t. Not just because Vanitas admitted in the same breath that he couldn’t, but also because Ven was too busy feeling confused and guilty to be frightened as well.  
  
“But why don’t I _remember_ that? If I took your body, if I hurt you, why don’t I remember?”  
  
There was another long silence. Eventually, Vanitas said, “It’s not like you were somewhere else. You’re me. And then I got…split off, and you were left behind. I guess you didn’t really do anything, much. You just stayed where I was. It’s their fault. They made it so I couldn’t get back in when I tried.”  
  
“You tried to…get back into my heart?” Ven touched his chest. It didn’t feel like anything was missing or broken. He thought all hearts felt like this, though he supposed he’d never asked.  
  
“I tried to get back into _my_ heart. It is mine! You’re just an extra piece that got broken off and left behind and thinks it’s all there ever was.”  
  
“That’s not true,” Ven insisted. “It’s my heart. Even if what you’re saying is true, it’s my heart, just as much as yours! And who’s ‘they’, anyway? What did ‘they’ do?”  
  
“I don’t _know_! They won’t _tell_ me!” Vanitas shouted. “I think it was the Master,” he continued more calmly. “He’s the only one who could. But he won’t undo it.”  
  
“Good!” No matter what Vanitas said, Ven liked who he was now. He didn’t want to be someone else. He felt plenty complete without adding Vanitas in. Master Eraqus said that darkness should be banished from the heart as much as possible. Letting Vanitas, who was all darkness, back in, would be giving in to it, the way he wasn’t supposed to.  
  
This time, Ven was the one who turned on his heel and left. He didn’t feel much like talking to Vanitas anymore. He wanted his real friends, the ones who didn’t say he was a copy or a thief.  
  
The ones who, maybe, were lying to him. He took off at a run. He wanted to talk to Terra. Terra would tell him the real truth, and then it would all be okay, and he could stop feeling so turned over and over inside.  
  


* * *

 

He was starting to regret having talked to Ven. Even if it had been fun to puncture the bubble of ignorance that floated around him, the way everyone stared at him like he’d done something wrong was taking all the enjoyment out of it. They hadn’t said anything, so it was hard to tell what they really thought, but from the way they all looked at him, he was going to be in trouble as soon as they agreed on an excuse.  
  
The Master didn’t know the details, Vanitas thought. He looked at Vanitas as reprovingly as everyone else, but he always did. There was no particular tone to it. Besides, if the Master thought he’d done wrong, he wouldn’t have wasted time on glaring.  
  
The other boy kept staring at him like he should be feeling guilty for telling the truth – well, most of the truth, anyway. More of the truth than Ven had been hearing from the people who claimed they cared about him. It looked like Vanitas was the only person willing to face facts in this castle. That struck him as appropriate: he had always been the only person he could trust to be honest with himself. ( **He hadn’t been completely honest, though** – _the other boy had rushed to tell everyone; it was just keeping himself safe to hold some back_.) It looked like the other boy didn’t like what he’d learned. Well, fine. Now they were finally on the same page. Vanitas didn’t like it, either. That didn’t mean it wasn’t so.  
  
He knew the other boy had told Aqua and Terra, because they were both treating him unusually. Aqua talked to him as much as she always did, but the whole time she managed to make it sound like she was giving him a lecture, even when she was talking about the weather. It would have been kind of impressive, had he been in any mood to be impressed. The worst part was that it was working. He didn’t care about what she thought of him. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him. So why did he keep feeling awkward and almost guilty whenever she gave him that look?  
  
Terra wasn’t making him feel guilty, at least. He was just glaring at Vanitas without saying anything and hovering around Ven like a mother bird or something equally ridiculous. That was much more comfortable, when it came right down to it. It wasn’t like Vanitas objected to not being talked at by Terra. He was boring and stupid and always wanted Vanitas to be in the wrong, even though he wasn’t.  
  
He made more sense than Aqua that way. Terra was one of the light people, so he didn’t like Vanitas, who was darkness. That was the way it was supposed to be. Darkness didn’t like light, either, not that anyone except Vanitas cared what darkness liked around here. Why Terra insisted on keeping Vanitas around anyway, he didn’t know. That was the only thing about Terra that didn’t make sense.  
  
When Terra grabbed him as he was coming out of the hallway to the practice room, Vanitas was something like relieved. This wasn’t the Master, so he wasn’t going to be really punished, but it wasn’t Aqua either, so he wasn’t going to feel bad about being sharp back at her. As for the other boy, Ven touching him wasn’t an experience he was eager to repeat any time soon. It felt wrong, too close and not close enough at the same time. Terra was much simpler to deal with.  
  
“What did you do to Ven?” Even the questions were simple.  
  
Vanitas shrugged, but only one shoulder rose. The other arm was being held too tightly to move properly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
That was a lie so blatant even Terra couldn’t help but recognize it. “Tell the truth!” He shook the arm he held.  
  
It might be worth it to get in trouble for using a Keyblade, just to make him let go. “I didn’t _do_ anything. Didn’t he tell you? He runs to you about every little thing. Don’t tell me he didn’t spill every word I said.” One of them had to be the babbler, and it wasn’t Vanitas. He could keep a secret. He could keep a lot of secrets. Who would he tell them to? No one else ( **would listen** ) deserved to know.  
  
“When he touched you, he said he felt strange. What did you do?”  
  
Terra loomed closer. It was easy to forget, when they were avoiding each other, that he was much taller than Vanitas. Taller and stronger, and no one else was there who might distract him or call him away. He couldn’t fight Terra and win, not when Terra already had ahold of him and was too close. Vanitas would have to run again, if he could get away, but the wall behind him was unhelpfully solid.  
  
Suddenly, Terra let go of Vanitas’s arm and took several quick steps back. Vanitas eyed him warily, waiting for the the start of his attack, but it didn’t seem to be forthcoming. A lot of the anger had left Terra’s face, leaving behind an expression that he couldn’t place but which was probably some form of pity, to judge by the words that accompanied it. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”  
  
That was strange. Terra wouldn’t get in trouble for hitting Vanitas unless he ran off to confess on his own. Vanitas wasn’t a weak tattle-tale, and anyway, it wasn’t like the Master would take his word over Terra’s. Aqua might, he thought unbidden, but then dismissed the notion. She would believe her friend. Terra wasn’t a good liar, but he didn’t have to be. His word was good, and Vanitas’s wasn’t and never could be. So why stop?  
  
“I’m just asking,” Terra said. “What happened?”  
  
“Nothing,” Vanitas repeated. “ _He_ touched _me_. I didn’t ask him to.” Maybe the other boy had told his friends something different. Some light he was, if he had. Lies were supposed to be for the darkness, as the Master constantly reminded everyone.  
  
“He said it hurt.” Terra might not be holding him in place anymore, but he was still blocking the way and glowering.  
  
“That’s not my problem, is it?” said Vanitas. It certainly hadn’t hurt _him_ , except in the frustration of running into that barrier again. It had felt wider, like the barrier was growing. Like his body was moving farther and farther out of his reach.  
  
“I didn’t hurt him,” he said for the sake of saying it. At least he would know that he’d told the truth and Terra hadn’t listened. It was more satisfying than lying that way. “I don’t know what he felt, but I didn’t do it. If grabbing me hurt him, it hurt him because he’s supposed to be part of me, but whatever your Master did got in the way.”  
  
“The Master wouldn’t do anything to hurt Ven,” said Terra. His hero-worship was kind of sad sometimes, Vanitas thought. Sooner or later, he would either find out what Masters were really like or turn into one himself without noticing. Maybe both.  
  
Vanitas smirked. “He would have killed me,” he pointed out. “That would have done more than hurt.” Two pieces of a heart could be separated, but they couldn’t outlive each other. The way Ven still wrung his hand when Vanitas punched a wall proved that.  
  
“He –” Terra plainly had no answer to this, which was just as well, since as far as Vanitas was concerned, there was none. He seemed to resent this fact. “Don’t hurt Ven anymore!”  
  
“I didn’t hurt him to start with,” Vanitas said. This was somewhat stretching the truth: he took a certain pleasure in getting as close to the other boy as possible without risking a touch and smacking his own shin into something. The bruises were entirely worth it. But he hadn’t been doing it then, which was what mattered. “You might as well tell him not to hurt me, if you really care.” Terra didn’t care, of course, but he liked to pretend he did. It was kind of fun to show up the lie.  
  
“Ven would never hurt someone. He’s bright, not like – ” Terra cut himself off, but Vanitas heard the unspoken word anyway.  
  
“Not like me?” he said. “Not a horrible creature of the darkness whose only purpose is to kill and destroy? Well done, then, letting one into your house instead of killing it when you had the chance. Too bad about that collateral damage, but that’s not what matters, is it? You could destroy him to save him. Then the darkness would be gone.” Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop. The guilty look on Terra’s face, quickly shifting into anger, was enough to spur him on. “I can’t tell which bothers you more: that he used to be tainted, or that what it took to make that precious pure light of his was creating someone like me.”  
  
He clamped his mouth shut. He was getting too close to telling secrets. He wondered what Terra would say if Vanitas told him how it felt, being torn apart, not being able to hold on to an emotion for too long before it leaked away, always knowing where he should be but not able to get there.  
  
Probably he wouldn’t say anything, or he would say it was just what Vanitas deserved, as though deserving had anything to do with the real world. He didn’t like Vanitas, after all. He wouldn’t care how it felt.  
  
He had, however, stepped back again, far enough that Vanitas could duck around him and escape. It was a good time to go sit in one of his hiding places. He’d left a book there that looked like it might be able to help fix him, if he could learn the magic it described.  
  
Terra didn’t call after him. He wondered why any part of him had expected otherwise.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
It was getting harder and harder to keep Ven away from Vanitas, though Terra tried. Ven’s curiosity about the things Vanitas had said hadn’t abated at all, and when he was curious he sometimes went too far. Terra hadn’t caught him until he’d been sneaking _out_ of Vanitas’s bedroom one afternoon, but he did manage to collar him the next day on the verge of running after Vanitas on one of the latter’s mysterious excursions.  
  
“Terra, where’s he going?” Ven asked, trying to squirm away.  
  
“It’s none of your business,” Terra said firmly.  
  
“But he’s me, so it is my business! Besides, I thought he was supposed to stay where you or Aqua could keep an eye on him.”  
  
Terra sighed. He didn’t particularly want to explain this – he wasn’t sure, when it came right down to it, that they were doing right – but he clearly had no choice. “He’s supposed to, but it’s not fair on anyone to watch him all the time. We have other things to do.”  
  
“He could be up to something!” objected Ven. “Do you even know where he’s going?”  
  
“No,” said Terra shortly, though he did have some idea. There were a lot of nooks and crannies in the castle where someone Ven’s or Vanitas’s size could fit without being easily noticed. Considering where Vanitas tended to disappear from, his bet was on one of the attics, where there were large windows to see by and a lot of places to sit that were completely invisible from the door. Some of the rooms didn’t get used for years.  
  
“But –”  
  
“It’s not a problem, Ven. I promise. He’s not up to anything.” Terra wondered as he said it if that was wishful thinking talking, if he was giving Vanitas more credit than he deserved, if he was seeing what he understood because he understood it.  
  
Ven frowned. “But how do you _know_?”  
  
Naturally, he asked the question Terra didn’t want to answer. There were some things Ven shouldn’t have to know. “Vanitas…had a rough time before he came here. He’s not doing any harm by going off on his own.” At least, Terra hoped not.  
  
“Did he tell you that? He doesn’t talk to anyone.” As might have been expected, Ven was distracted only by the opportunity to learn more about Vanitas.  
  
“Sort of,” Terra said, trying to avoid the question. He didn’t like talking about it even to Aqua, and Ven was ten times worse, because Ven would be hearing it for the very first time. Terra wanted to protect him from ever having to know those things. It was selfish, too: he didn’t want Ven to look at him differently.  
  
Ven either didn’t recognize the attempt at avoidance or didn’t care. “So how do you know?”  
  
Terra swallowed. Why couldn’t Ven leave it alone? Terra didn’t want to think about it more than he had to. “I just _do_ , okay?” The words came out sounding angrier than he felt.  
  
The way Ven flinched and shrank down from a flailing whirlwind of energy to a slightly somber boy made Terra feel like the worst person in all the worlds. “Okay,” he mumbled, shoulders slouching.  
  
Terra would have done anything to make that slouch go away. Explaining was the least of it. “Sometimes, when people have had a difficult time, it takes a while for them to really realize that it’s okay again. It’s not easy to change habits they’ve had for a long time. Vanitas just needs more time to get used to things.”  
  
Ven’s shoulders came back up, and the pain in Terra’s heart eased. “Is that really all?”  
  
It might not be all. It probably wasn’t, considering what Vanitas was. Still, he and Aqua had decided to let him be. Of all the things he might be doing, sitting quietly somewhere they hadn’t put him was the most benign. And as long as he was hiding in the attics, he couldn’t hurt Ven by accident or otherwise again.  
  
“That’s all. He just needs some space of his own. If he was doing something bad in the castle, the Master would know about it.” That was a reassurance Terra felt perfectly comfortable giving. Master Eraqus knew everything that went on in the castle. He would never allow Vanitas to get away with letting darkness loose. “It’s okay,” he repeated.  
  
Ven smiled. “Okay!” he said. “If you’re sure – What’s that?”  
  
“It’s the hall!” Terra shouted over the sudden chorus of bells. “Master Eraqus wants everyone there, right away.”  
  
The bells didn’t ring often, these days. There were fewer important visitors to the castle than there used to be, with the monsters crowded so closely around the mountain despite the Master’s best efforts to clear them out. Usually, Master Eraqus went down to the town to speak with people. The visitor had to be someone who wasn’t troubled by the monsters, or who was on business so urgent that they’d risked it anyway. Either way, it had to be important, or the Master wouldn’t be ringing the bells for everyone to come.  
  
As Terra and Ven ran toward the hall, Terra tried to wonder about the important visitor, but his mind kept slipping away to think about Vanitas instead. He didn’t like Vanitas. The boy was strange, always looking for a fight and saying things to hurt whether or not they were true, and he didn’t talk to anyone, even Aqua. He didn’t have anything to talk about, Terra thought treacherously, not when they were all students but Vanitas wasn’t. He couldn’t be a student, because he was too full of darkness. Making him stronger would go against all of Master Eraqus’s teachings. He was barely less of a monster than the ones outside. He was a boy who thought everyone was going to hurt him if they came too close.  
  
He thought the worst of everyone and refused to believe that they were good people. That made him a bad person: he guessed what other people would do by what he would have done in the same situation. Or maybe, Terra couldn’t help thinking, he’d been around so many bad people he couldn’t help thinking of what people like that would do.  
  
It could be both. He was a creature of darkness. No matter how much Terra thought he understood him when Vanitas tensed at sudden movements and watched everyone too closely, he had to remember that darkness did not live in a pure heart.  
  
Maybe that was the real reason he thought he understood. Maybe any sympathy he felt was just his darkness reaching out to a similar darkness. He shouldn’t feel that they were similar. He wasn’t like Vanitas. He couldn’t be.  
  
He was failing again – still – to conquer the darkness in his heart, if he still felt like he and Vanitas had so much in common. He had to be different. He thought of what Master Eraqus would say, if he knew that Terra felt similar to Vanitas. He would say that Terra was letting himself slip closer to the darkness. He would say that it was a sign of Terra’s failure as a potential Keyblade Master. He would say that Vanitas had to go, one way or another, if he was corrupting Terra.  
  
Terra shouldn’t feel such resistance to the idea of sending Vanitas away. Darkness should be pushed away, repelled, given no quarter. If he felt otherwise, it was his failing. He had to stop feeling that way, but he couldn’t seem to manage it, no matter how he tried.  
  
Fortunately for Terra’s train of thought, he and Ven arrived in the hall before his mind had time to spin in any more inconclusive circles. The Master was there, and with him another man, one Terra had seen before. He was Ven’s old Master, that was it, Master…Xehanort, Terra thought.  
  
Aqua was already there too, standing at formal attention against the wall. The Masters couldn’t see it, but Terra could tell she was cheating a little, leaning against the wall and letting it take some of her weight. He didn’t blame her. She must have been in the middle of a lesson when Master Xehanort had arrived.  
  
He joined her against the wall, giving her a smile to show that he knew what she was doing. She pulled a quick face at him, whispering, “I didn’t have time to cool down, shush!”  
  
“I know,” he whispered back. “What’s going on?”  
  
“I don’t know. He just – Ven, are you okay?”  
  
Terra turned to look. Ven had been right on his heels coming into the hall, but now he was dawdling near the door, looking up at the dais with a nervous expression on his face. Terra held out a hand to him. “C’mon, Ven. Over here.”  
  
Ven joined them quickly enough, but he grabbed onto Terra’s hand tightly, which he hadn’t done for ages, and his nervous expression didn’t abate.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Aqua asked in an undertone so as not to disturb the Masters’ conversation.  
  
“Nothing,” Ven said unconvincingly.  
  
“You’re not in trouble or anything,” Terra offered. Ven had never heard the bells before, after all. He might not know what they were for. “The Master just wants us all here for something.” Without talking about it, he and Aqua shifted positions quickly so that Ven was between them. It might make him feel safer. It certainly made them feel like he was safer.  
  
It didn’t seem to work this time. “I know, it’s just…that man seems familiar, and I don’t know why.”  
  
“He was the one that brought you here,” explained Aqua. “I think he used to be your teacher.”  
  
“My…teacher?” Ven said. “You mean I had one, before?”  
  
Terra nodded. “That’s what Master Eraqus said.” It was also what Vanitas had said, but Terra didn’t want to think about Vanitas anymore. He’d done enough of that already.  
  
Ven looked up at the dais again. “So why don’t I like him?”  
  
Terra and Aqua looked up from Ven to meet each other’s eyes, shocked and at least in Terra’s case worried, but before they could say anything, the Masters finished their conversation and turned to face them. Master Eraqus began to speak.  
  
“I trust you remember Master Xehanort. He has come here because he has information on these monsters that plague us. He has uncovered the source – ”  
  
Unsurprisingly late, Vanitas sauntered into the hall as though no one were speaking. “What’s all the racket – ”  
  
Terra was glaring at him for being so rude when he saw the look of self-satisfaction drain from Vanitas’s face. What replaced it was a moment of complete and utter stillness. Then the commotion began.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
It was him.  
  
 **It was the old man.**  
  
 _It was his Master_.  
  
Vanitas felt his gaze caught like a rabbit in a snare. _His_ **other** Master held his eyes -- _the same gold, they could be father and son_ – **doctor and monster** – _rightful owner and wayward property_ \-- and Vanitas knew he could read everything there, could see right through to the heart where no one else had ever been. _That was right, and that was proper, and that was the way it had always been. His Master was the only one who had ever known him._  
  
“No! No, no, no, nononono – ”  
  
He was speaking without thought. He couldn’t wrench his gaze away. He felt the narrowing of _his_ the Master’s eyes like a blow, and he reeled back, but not even that took him away from the line that stretched between them, a chain no one else could see, _duty and respect and gratitude_ **and pain and fear and loneliness**. The Master could pull him in with that gaze. _And wasn’t that right? The Master was the only person who really existed for him, the only one who had really touched his life. He’d had_ **a good run** _a chance to spread his wings, but now it was time to_ **leave** _go home._ It hurt. It was going to hurt. The Master was going to _give back his certainty_ **take everything away again.**  
  
A shadow passed between them, breaking the connection. Vanitas focused on the shadow, **avoiding** _delaying_ what lay beyond. Bare shoulder, white fabric, a line of fitted metal like scales: Aqua’s arm. Aqua, getting between _him and his Master_ **like a shield** unaware of what it was she did, bending down and looking in his face.  
  
“Vanitas? Vanitas, what’s wrong?”  
  
He wanted to answer. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell her to go away. He wanted to tell her to help him, if she ever really meant any of the things she said, if she ever cared even a little she would **not** _let_ **let** _him_ **him** _go_ **go** _home_ –  
  
The words died. All there was was a scream.  
  
The Master was speaking. That was the only sound that mattered: **the first sound he’d heard with these ears, on that day** – _the voice that had come for him when he’d been lost and taken him away_ – **the last sound he’d heard with his own ears, telling him** – _what he should have listened to from the first_. Vanitas listened, but he kept looking at Aqua. He couldn’t look up. He wasn’t ready to bear that **ever** _again_.  
  
“So he was hiding here all along. I must apologize, for all the trouble I brought upon you through my negligence.”  
  
The _other_ Master spoke as well, voice closer than before. They were all closing in. He could feel Ven nearby. He could hear Terra saying something empty and unimportant. Nothing Terra had to say could be important now. His Master was important. The _other_ Master was important. He said, “You knew of his existence before this?”  
  
“Yes, I knew from the start. He splintered from Ventus during the accident, but I was too preoccupied with the boy to pursue him. He has been evading me ever since.”  
  
Vanitas felt the hollowness inside him widen impossibly huge, until it felt like he was only paper wrapped around a gaping void. His Master was lying, saying Vanitas wasn’t his pupil. His Master was denying him. His Master didn’t want him.  
  
He looked up past Aqua, _hoping to be caught and held again, praying for some hint that only they would know that meant it was only a trick and nothing more, a way of getting him back, anything, anything at all_. His Master’s eyes slid past his as though they were not even there.  
  
The void inside him, the void that was him, filled up like a pool with a tidal wave passing over it. He couldn’t hold it. He didn’t want to. _It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, if his Master rejected him then what was the point of anything at all?_  
  
For the first time in months, he let his emotions boil out of him without even trying to suppress them.  
  
He convulsed, retching with his soul, as they forced their way out. The sickness was almost a relief: it took him somewhere else. **That day, under the bright sun, the monsters everywhere, he didn’t want to fight** – _why couldn’t he make his Master proud, just once? –_ **this was supposed to be better, the old man said it would be better, he wouldn’t have to fight anymore** – _if he’d fought, if he’d just done what he was told, he wouldn’t be here now_ – **nowhere to run** – _nowhere to go_ – **he screamed inside** – _he was weak at the end_ – **he hadn’t stopped screaming inside since**.  
  
There was an army around him, when he came back to himself: fear and anger and confusion and loneliness and pain and hate and greed and grief and envy, all around him, and inside only blissful hollowness, like he was barely there at all and nothing could hurt him more.  
  
“What is this?” The _other_ Master saw, now. He would kill Vanitas. Vanitas thought he might be okay with that.  
  
“Vanitas? What’s going on? What happened?” Aqua’s voice shook. He looked up at her.  
  
She was standing over him, her Keyblade in hand, but she wasn’t striking him down yet. Instead, her eyes were flickering from one emotion to the next, always up and away, like he wasn’t enough of a threat to bother with, or like she didn’t realize he was a threat at all. Her eyes were wide and her mouth trembled slightly, just enough to see. She was scared. That wasn’t right, he thought. She was confident and bossy and in control, all the time. She couldn’t be scared. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be.  
  
“Ven!” Vanitas felt a jab of pain pass through him to join the rest as one of the envies flung itself at Ven, only to be smashed to the ground by Terra’s Keyblade.  
  
 _This was what was always going to happen, what he was made for._ **This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all.** He wasn’t sure he even existed, when he felt so empty and thin. He didn’t want this. He wanted his emotions back.  
  
With a sudden instinctive effort, he pulled them all back inside him, every last one. They melted into darkness that flowed across the white stone like rivers into what passed for his heart.  
  
It hurt. It hurt worse than he’d thought it could, and it felt worse than that still, like swallowing a barrel of slime. No one knew what to think of him. He could see Aqua and Terra staring down at him with wide eyes, and **Ven** – _the other boy_ was on the ground too, holding his head and yelling, as though he could possibly feel as bad as Vanitas did, even if they were the same.  
  
He couldn’t hold on, any more than he had ever been able to. The feelings poured out of him again, re-carving their dark rivers in the stone. But he got his fingers into them and pulled, and they flowed back in. He couldn’t hold them for as long this time, and they escaped. In and out, back and forth – could tides pull a planet apart? He thought he was about to find out. But that was better, that was so much better, than what would be waiting for him when he stopped and turned around to see what **his** _the other_ the two Masters were going to do with him.  
  
Back and forth, emptiness and slick disgusting everything, wanting to gag, wanting to scream, scrabbling to hold on, certain it wouldn’t be enough, he was losing it, he was finally after all his trying going to fall apart in a shower of emotions, so much for being the real one (despair tasted like dust pouring back over his tongue), so much for being –  
  
He knew no more.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Aqua let her Keyblade go as Vanitas collapsed. The monsters were gone, at least for the moment – confined under his skin, she thought, and wanted briefly to be sick. She shook it off. This was no time to be squeamish.  
  
“Master, is he –?” she asked, not certain of the answer she wanted, or indeed the rest of the question.  
  
“He sleeps, for now,” said Master Eraqus, lowering his own Keyblade. “A magical sleep. He will not wake unless he is disturbed, and even then only with reluctance, for so long as the magic lasts.”  
  
Under any other circumstances, she would have been eager to hear more of the details of this spell. Right at the moment, however, Aqua had no interest in learning about anything but Vanitas, and the monsters, and Ven.  
  
“Ven!” she exclaimed, looking across the room to where Ven was still lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. He wasn’t screaming anymore; hopefully, that meant he was feeling better.  
  
“I’m okay,” Ven mumbled. He didn’t sound okay, but as long as he was talking, he was doing better than Aqua had feared when she had seen him collapse with a whole battalion of monsters converging on him.  
  
Terra knelt over him, running a hand soothingly through his hair. “Are you sure? You’re not hurt?”  
  
“Terra, I’m fine.” Ven sounded more like his everyday self as he batted Terra’s hand away. “I just – it hurt, a lot, and it was like I was seeing things.”  
  
“What did you see?” asked Master Xehanort. Aqua had almost forgotten about him. Now she jumped, startled to realize he had come up behind her while she was distracted.  
  
Ven looked up, then looked quickly down again. “I don’t really remember,” he said, but Aqua thought there was more to it than that. He sounded like he was lying, and to a Master! She didn’t know why.  
  
But Ven had to have his reasons. He wouldn’t lie just for the fun of it. Aqua turned her attention to Vanitas. Kneeling, she checked him over as best she could. Under the magical sleep, it was hard to tell anything, even just that he was breathing, but his pulse was even. There wasn’t much more she thought she could say with any kind of certainty.  
  
“What happened?” she asked Master Xehanort, as the only person who didn’t seem confused. “What’s wrong with him?”  
  
Master Xehanort sighed. “This was what I had come to tell you, Eraqus,” he said, addressing the Master instead of her, as was proper. “When Ventus’s heart was damaged, the darkness took on a most unusual form, one which resembles a real being, but also is capable of producing monsters, these Unversed you have been plagued by. They spring from his body, and he seeds them wherever he goes. That is how I was eventually able to track him to this world. Such a concentration of Unversed…they could only have come about if he was nearby for quite some time.”  
  
Aqua tried to process this. All this time, Vanitas had been the source of the monsters? He had been lying to them all along, then. That hurt more than she had expected it to. She had really thought they were reaching him, but maybe that was just another lie. She drew her hand back slowly from Vanitas’s face. He would be laughing at her, probably, the way he did when he thought he had scored a point against her, if he could see her worrying about his health this way.  
  
“But why?” she asked, though the only person whose answer mattered wasn’t awake to hear it. “Why would he do this?”  
  
Master Xehanort shook his head sadly. “Who can say why a creature formed of pure darkness behaves as it does? Deceit and destruction are woven into his very nature.”  
  
“It’s really his nature?” Terra asked. “He can’t change it, or overcome it?” He was still crouched by Ven, but he was looking at Vanitas with much of the same turmoil Aqua felt in his eyes.  
  
It wasn’t fair for him to look like that. It wasn’t fair of Vanitas to make them all feel like they had lost something, when there had really never been anything there at all. He hadn’t ever been anything other than the creator of the monsters.  
  
“Though he may appear otherwise, he is truly no more alive than a Heartless. There is no true heart to change,” said Master Xehanort.  
  
That was a blow all its own. Aqua bit her lip and looked away from Vanitas, from the person she had thought him to be. That had all been a lie. There had never been anything to reach, only a kind of trick that was very good at pretending to be real. Perhaps he wouldn’t have laughed after all. Perhaps there was nothing inside that could laugh.  
  
Still…she could hear his screams echoing in her ears, could see behind her eyelids the panic in his face as the darkness had burst out of him. That wasn’t like a monster, not at all. Monsters’ fingers didn’t scrabble for purchase on the smooth floor, as though something to hold on to would help. Monsters didn’t grab hold of their darkness and choke it down to keep it from hurting other people. Monsters didn’t feel pain. Monsters didn’t care what happened. Monsters didn’t hurt themselves trying to stop the darkness.  
  
Monsters didn’t read. Monsters didn’t watch other people’s training with such a hungry, jealous look. Monsters didn’t freeze in place and flick their eyes around every time someone around them moved suddenly. Monsters didn’t cry. Monsters didn’t kill other monsters, certainly not monsters they had created themselves. Monsters didn’t insist so desperately that they were real. Monsters didn’t sulk about doing dishes. Monsters didn’t clean their rooms. Monsters didn’t look around a perfectly ordinary roomful of people as though it was a foreign country.  
  
If Master Xehanort said so, Vanitas had to be a monster. But it didn’t feel right to Aqua.  
  
“That’s not true.”  
  
At first, Aqua wasn’t sure who had spoken. It was so quiet that she wondered if she hadn’t imagined it, or muttered it to herself. Then she realized that it was Ven. He was looking nervously around as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but when it was clear the Masters hadn’t heard, he repeated himself.  
  
“That’s not true. He does have a heart. We have the same heart. If I have a heart, so does he.”  
  
Master Xehanort fixed him with a sharp look, and he subsided, ducking his head. “If you have a heart, eh, Ventus? And what makes you think that you do?”  
  
“Xehanort!” Master Eraqus’s sharp exclamation cut off Terra’s and Aqua’s protests before they could begin.  
  
It was clearly enough to get the point across, better than either of they could have. Master Xehanort amended, “Your heart was injured, and Vanitas is the darkness that spilled forth, as blood spills from an ordinary wound. He was formed from your heart, but claiming that that gives him some claim to a heart of his own is a stretch indeed.”  
  
That wasn’t what Vanitas had said – but of course, he would have been lying. He would always have been lying. Master Xehanort wouldn’t lie to them about something this important. If it didn’t sound quite right, that was because Aqua didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want to have lost someone, especially not by never having had them at all.  
  
“You are sure of this?” said Master Eraqus.  
  
“I would never make such a sorrowful pronouncement if I were not. Loath as I am to say it, that is no boy, no true being, only a Heartless of a peculiar type. Your light cannot save an abomination such as this. Nothing can, I fear.”  
  
“I see. Then you recommend?”  
  
“Regrettable though it be, he is a source of great turmoil in the worlds. He must be stopped, no matter the cost.”  
  
They were talking about destroying him, Aqua realized numbly. They were talking about destroying him, and Ven was the cost. She raised her eyes to Terra’s and saw the same realization in them, the same dawning horror.  
  
The Master was going to destroy Vanitas, and that would destroy Ven too. Ven, who smiled so brightly. Ven, who worried her with his recklessness. Ven, who still held his Keyblade like he thought it might be about to bite him. Ven, who asked a thousand questions a day. Ven, who had woken up before her eyes. Ven, who was their charge. Ven, who shared their dream.  
  
Terra’s head was shaking slowly, though he seemed not to be aware of it. Neither did he seem to be aware of the arm that reached out to encircle Ven’s shoulders, tugging him close. Ven usually squirmed out of embraces, finding them too slow and restrictive, but this time he squirmed closer instead.  
  
The two of them were so close. Losing Ven would rip Terra apart. Aqua wasn’t sure she could survive it either, but more than that she knew she couldn’t, didn’t want to, survive losing them both, and she would. Even just losing Vanitas, if it was possible by some miracle to save Ven, would throw them out of the balance they had formed together. They weren’t meant to be separated. None of them were, she knew that now in a way she hadn’t considered before. She saw Terra knew it too.  
  
She would have gone to them, but she was afraid to leave Vanitas alone and asleep, undefended. Instead they came to her, hurrying as though they were under attack already and she was the only shelter.  
  
She wrapped one arm around Ven. Her other hand and Terra’s met behind Vanitas’s head, tucking him into the circle of them. She didn’t know what was going to happen, what they could possibly do against this horrible truth, but at least they would do it together.  
  
Master Eraqus saw what they were doing before Master Xehanort did. “Terra, Aqua, what –” He cut himself off. It had to be obvious what they were doing, at least as far as they knew what they were doing. The Master looked at them with sorrow. “It must be done. The balance cannot be jeopardized.”  
  
“Please, Master,” Aqua begged, “isn’t there some other way? Isn’t there _anything_ you can do to save them?”  
  
She cared as much about Vanitas as about Ven, still. Even if Master Xehanort said that he was a monster, he didn’t feel like one to her. It wasn’t just Ven she didn’t want to lose. There was someone in Vanitas, buried under sneers and skittishness, whom she had seen once or twice and desperately wanted to get to know better. It wasn’t fair to take that chance away from him, from them all.  
  
Terra added his voice to hers. “We can take care of the monsters. It’s been okay this long!”  
  
But Master Eraqus was unmoved. “Will you also take responsibility for every person injured by them?”  
  
“The Unversed cannot be driven back,” added Master Xehanort. “Have you not noticed that the numbers around the castle only increase as time goes by, attack them as you may? They will not disappear while he continues to exist.”  
  
“Please!” Terra sounded desperate, almost as desperate as Aqua felt. “There has to be another way!”  
  
Master Eraqus shook his head. “Stand aside, both of you. It must be done.”  
  
Between them, shielded from the Masters by their bodies, Ven was shaking, but that didn’t stop him from trying to wriggle away from the embrace at last. “Don’t get hurt because of me,” he said quietly.  
  
He hadn’t meant it to, but those simple words made it very easy, when it came right down to it, for Aqua to stay where she was. She let go of Terra’s hand to pull Vanitas closer to her. They were her friends. She would stand with them, no matter what. Even if the Master said it was necessary. She didn’t want to be without them.  
  
“No matter the cost,” said Master Xehanort, and he leveled his Keyblade at Vanitas. Aqua only clutched him closer, shielding him as best she could with her own body. With what she hoped would be greater effect, she drew her Keyblade and brought her barrier into existence around both of them.  
  
It was darkness, not light, that rushed at her, taking her by surprise. The barrier wasn’t enough. A white-hot spear of pain struck her in the ribs, and behind her Ven cried out as her vision went white.  
  
When her vision cleared, it occurred to her that she was still alive, although she wasn’t sure it would last. Her side was a maelstrom of agony, and the healing magic she could pour into it only abated the pain slightly, enough for her to realize how pointless bothering with it was and to brace for a second, final blow.  
  
It didn’t come.  
  
She fumbled for her friends. Vanitas still breathed, though from the sound of it he was starting to struggle against the sleep spell, pain pulling him out of it. Ven’s breathing she could hear as well as feel. As for Terra –  
  
As for Terra, he was on his feet, Keyblade locked with Master Xehanort’s.  
  
She had to help him. He was trying to hold Master Xehanort off and away from them, succeeding for the moment – raising a blade against a Master, they were going to be in so much trouble – but it wouldn’t last. Aqua struggled to her feet. The pain in her side was irrelevant. She wouldn’t let it control her.  
  
“Enough!”  
  
She froze automatically at the tone of voice. Terra did the same, and Master Xehanort took advantage of the opportunity to knock him to the floor. There was a frightening light in the Master’s eyes as he stepped toward Aqua. She swallowed hard but stood her ground. She wasn’t going to back down, not from this, not now.  
  
“Enough, Xehanort.” The Master’s Keyblade interposed itself between them, pushing both of their Keyblades down and aside. Master Eraqus looked as grim as ever, but it was Aqua he turned to this time. “You would defy even a Master over this?”  
  
“Yes.” She took a breath around the pain and added, “He’s our friend. They’re both our friends. I can’t just stand aside and let them get hurt.”  
  
From the corner of her eye, she saw Ven stand and step away from her protection, away from Terra as well. “Aqua,” he said, “it’s okay. I don’t – please, don’t get hurt because of me. You don’t have to do that.”  
  
“We’re not giving up on you,” Terra said, picking himself up off the ground.  
  
Aqua looked Master Eraqus in the eye. She didn’t feel uncertain any longer. When she spoke, her voice was steady and strong. “I’m sorry, Master, but we’re not changing our minds.”  
  
For the first time in her life, his gaze was the one that dropped first. He looked old, all of a sudden, and tired. She hadn’t thought that she could be frightened any more than she was, but that frightened her. “Very well.  
  
“Xehanort, I thank you for your information, but I will handle this problem as I see fit. My students are not yours to dispose of.”  
  
Master Xehanort nodded, but Aqua wasn’t sure she liked the look on his face. “I see how it stands. I leave the balance, as always, in your capable hands. The next time we meet, may it be under better circumstances.”  
  
With that, he left. Some tension Aqua couldn’t define left the room along with the sound of his boots on the stone. Master or not, he was the stranger here. She felt better knowing it was only them in the castle again.  
  
With the immediate danger past, the pain in her injury seemed to redouble, and she couldn’t prevent a groan from escaping her. Master Eraqus’s hands were on her shoulders in an instant, supporting her as healing light washed down over her body.  
  
“Aqua, sit down! You will aggravate the injury. What were you thinking?”  
  
She sank obediently back to the floor. It was a very comfortable floor. She was quite fond of it. She was also, perhaps, just slightly disoriented by the fading adrenaline rush. She said, trying to keep her voice clear, “I couldn’t let him hurt them.”  
  
Terra settled down by her side. She leaned gratefully against his shoulder. He made an excellent constant in this room where nothing else seemed as it was before. Terra, at least, would always be as he was. Terra, at least, had no secrets from her. Terra, at least, she could trust completely to be himself no matter what. “I’m sorry you got hurt,” he muttered into her hair.  
  
She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. And, Ven, you don’t be sorry either. It was my choice, okay?”  
  
Ven still looked guilty, but he drifted a little closer, which she supposed was progress. “It’s my fault, though. If I’d never come here, you’d be okay.”  
  
“But I wouldn’t have met you.” She wondered if he understood how important that was.  
  
Master Eraqus was the only one still standing. He looked down at them. Aqua wondered what he saw. Whatever he saw, all he said was, “You take responsibility for them both, even knowing what Vanitas truly is?”  
  
Terra shook his head and spoke so Aqua didn’t have to. “He’s changed, since he got here. I don’t think he’s all bad inside. Maybe…Master Xehanort is mistaken.”  
  
It wasn’t a thought Aqua wanted to think: Masters should be right, always. That was what they were for. Still, it was better than believing that Vanitas was nothing more than a thin layer of pretense over something unrelievedly horrible, and that therefore he and Ven had to be destroyed in order to protect the worlds. Anything was better than believing that.  
  
As if in response to her thoughts, Vanitas shifted and groaned, finally working his way clear of the magical sleep. He was hurt too, Aqua noticed with a shock: dark smoke still rose from his left shoulder, where – she thought back – the bolt of darkness must have gone straight through before striking her side. It didn’t look too bad, but it was enough and more than enough to wake him.  
  
His eyes began to open. She wondered what she would see in them when they did.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
He hurt. He hurt and it was hard to think. Vanitas struggled to work out where he was and what kind of pain he was feeling.  
  
He was lying on something hard and cool. The pain was in his shoulder, a sharp specific pain that made it hard to notice anything else. It hurt like a stab wound, but it burned, too. He recognized this kind of pain, if he could only think of it.  
  
Darkness. This was the feeling of being attacked by darkness with a will behind it. He remembered where he was, now. He remembered enough, certainly, to be surprised at feeling anything at all. He hadn’t expected to survive – his thoughts skittered away from what he hadn’t expected to survive. He let them. If he thought too closely about it, it would happen again, and he remembered clearly enough how little he wanted that.  
  
So: he still existed, but his shoulder was wounded. That was enough to make waking up worthwhile. Vanitas opened his eyes.  
  
Most of what he saw was white stone floor and irrelevant, but there were a few pairs of very familiar feet. Not Master Xehanort’s feet (he decided that it was allowed to be glad of that, considering the things he didn’t want to think of), but the other Master’s, and Ven’s.  
  
Terra and Aqua were more than just feet, even from where he was looking along the floor. They were sitting next to each other, very close. That was both completely typical and very confusing. They shouldn’t be here. They should be attacking him, or running away from him, or both. They shouldn’t be sitting about.  
  
He tried to sit up, but as soon as he moved his left arm it exploded in pain and he fell back again with a stifled scream. At least he was on his back instead and could see more.  
  
Ven was staring at him again. He doubted he would ever get used to that. It was deeply unfair of Ven to stare at him when he couldn’t do anything to stop it. The Master was staring at him too, with even more of a suggestion that Vanitas was something many-legged and disgusting than usual. That was somewhat impressive; he’d thought the usual such look to be the pinnacle of its kind. Aqua and Terra were looking at him with their feelings all over their faces, like always, but unlike always he didn’t have the faintest idea what those feelings were.  
  
“Vanitas?” Aqua’s voice sounded off too, but not in a way that he was familiar with. There was fear there, but also something else, one of the feelings he had never been able to match.  
  
He nodded. “That’s me. Or so they say.” Maybe they would stop calling him that now, now that they had to believe he wasn’t enough of a person to be separate from the other boy. (He didn’t feel much like the real one, not right now.)  
  
He managed to lever himself up with just his right arm, enough to get a look at her from a less unhelpful angle.  
  
She was hurt too. The wound was closed, the darkness gone, but he could smell it on the hole in her bodice, on the scar already forming. Only darkness left marks like that, of all the things he’d ever known. Even with healing, there was no erasing the scars it made.  
  
She’d been fine when he’d passed out. Or had she? He might not have noticed, when he’d been…flipping out. Anything could have happened and he wouldn’t have known. The darkness wouldn’t have stopped for anything. If she’d been in the way, he might have pulled it right through her without noticing.  
  
“You’re hurt,” he said stupidly. He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t dare ask. He was afraid of what the answer would be.  
  
“It’s okay,” she said, but it was Terra, of all people, who knew what he meant.  
  
“You didn’t do it.”  
  
Terra couldn’t lie if his life depended on it, so Vanitas could stuff that particular worry down and forget about it. He wasn’t sure why it mattered. It shouldn’t matter, not to him. He didn’t like the idea of losing so much control as to hurt someone without knowing it. That was all. That had to be all.  
  
“ _You’re_ hurt,” Ven said.  
  
Vanitas chuckled despite himself. “How could you tell? I would never have guessed without you to tell me these things.”  
  
It wasn’t really a laughing matter: the pain was starting to make him sick, and if he started being sick again, he wasn’t sure he would be able to stop. Everything he couldn’t handle thinking about was still inside him, ready to burst out again if he felt it.  
  
“I can feel it,” said Ven. “When you’re hurt.”  
  
“Congratulations. You finally worked that out.” It had been fun, he thought, hitting himself on things to make Ven jump without knowing why his arm hurt suddenly. There would be no more of that. Of course, there was going to be no more of him –  
  
He avoided the thought. He wondered what had happened while he had been out of it. That was a much more productive line of thought, and less likely to make him emotional. Someone had hurt Aqua, and it hadn’t been him. Funny, it didn’t satisfy him to see her finally encounter the real world, not the way he had told himself it would. Part of him felt pleased that they would all know now what the world was really like, but the rest of him didn’t like it.  
  
“So who did put a hole in you, if it wasn’t me?” he asked.  
  
“…Master Xehanort.”  
  
Time seemed to stutter and jolt. Vanitas felt the sickness thrash inside him. He quelled it by thinking hard of the logic, pure and emotionless. Master Xehanort had injured Aqua, she said: that was really the most likely, if Vanitas hadn’t. The bastions of light wouldn’t have used darkness. And Vanitas had a wound from darkness as well. So, Master Xehanort had attacked both of them.  
  
He wouldn’t care about it. He couldn’t care about it. That way lay losing control again. He focused on the others, the people who weren’t – who hadn’t been – who didn’t matter as – who were, right now, less confusing.  
  
Terra was talking. “He used…that was darkness he used, wasn’t it, Master?”  
  
It sounded like Terra was encountering a different patch of the real world. Vanitas didn’t feel the least bit sorry about that one. If he didn’t realize that there were Keyblade Masters of the dark as well as the light, then he deserved the shock.  
  
“It was.” The Master loomed over Vanitas. “Master Xehanort acted in his own fashion to destroy the threat you represent, with my agreement. Aqua and Terra chose to defend you. You owe them your lives.” As if that was news. He battled down resentment. He hated owing, especially when he didn’t know how they planned to collect on the debt.  
  
“Vanitas, was it true, what he said?”  
  
“No!” he shouted without thinking. No, none of it was true, nothing the old man said was ever true – he stifled the emotions again. He couldn’t deal with them now. Everyone knew, but they weren’t killing him, so he wasn’t going to give them another reason. He was going to be rational and calm. “He said a lot. Which do you mean?”  
  
“You are a piece of Ventus, a fragment, nothing more.” When the Master said it, it wasn’t a question.  
  
Vanitas tried to subtly move away from him, but subtle was difficult with everyone staring at him. “That’s not true,” he insisted. “He knows that’s not true. He’s lying! I am real.”  
  
“You accuse a Master of deliberate falsehood?” That had clearly been the wrong thing to say, but there was no taking it back now. They knew, and Master Xehanort had repudiated him. There was no point to lying anymore.  
  
He wanted to tell them, Vanitas discovered. He didn’t know why, any more than he knew why they were listening to him, but he wanted to tell them the entire truth just for the sake of the telling. His injury was probably addling his wits, but there it was. “I do,” he said. “He’s lying. He knows what I am, and what – what made me and Ven separate. He knows because he did it.”  
  
Everyone spoke at once, exclamations that didn’t mean anything other disbelief. That hurt more than he’d expected it to. There was no reason to be hurt; he’d known all along that they wouldn’t believe him.  
  
Ven was the only one not to say anything. He was also the one who said into the silence when the others had to draw breath, “I believe you.”  
  
“Ven?!” said Aqua.  
  
“But a Master wouldn’t –” said Terra.  
  
Ven moved closer, close enough to touch but not touching, close enough that the empty space didn’t ache at all. “I think he did. I…remembered, a little bit, when my head hurt so much. Not a lot, but I was in a place that’s not here, surrounded by monsters, and he was there.”  
  
Those memories belonged to Vanitas, but right now he didn’t feel jealous at all. It was too much of a relief to have someone, even if it was himself, backing him up. “Yeah,” he said. “That was when it happened.”  
  
“Explain yourself,” demanded the Master. “And this time, tell the truth.”  
  
Vanitas nodded and tried to finish sitting up. Every little movement hurt his shoulder. “Can I get a hand with this?” he asked. “It kind of hurts, and all. You can always put another hole in me later.” It wasn’t a joke at all, but right now he wasn’t sure he cared about dying. He felt as though he’d pushed everything so far away to avoid losing his tenuous control over his emotions that nothing mattered at all.  
  
Except telling them. That still mattered. If Master Xehanort was done with him, then he was done too, with everything, all the lies and covering up and pretending.  
  
The Master didn’t like healing him, but apparently everyone else’s huge blue eyes staring at him were an effective method of persuasion. Vanitas drew his first long breath since waking up as the stabbing pain in his shoulder abated to a mere annoyance.  
  
“We’re going to have matching scars,” he said to Aqua. “It’s disgusting. Who told you that was allowed?”  
  
“Explanation. Now.” The Master was not in the mood for digressions.  
  
“Master Xehanort is – was – my teacher,” he began. “Before, when there was only one of me. He was…tough.” He didn’t want to go into detail. It wasn’t important. Besides, it had worked in the end, hadn’t it? Vanitas was strong. “He wanted me to combine the darkness in my heart with the light, but, I don’t know, I didn’t think it was a good idea at the time for some stupid reason.”  
  
“It’s _not_ a good idea,” Terra said.  
  
“That’s a matter of opinion. If I’d done it like he asked, there would still be only one of me, so I’d say it would be a fair enough trade.”  
  
“I wouldn’t,” said Ven. “I like being me.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re a thief,” said Vanitas. For once there was no real force behind the words. It couldn’t be allowed to matter if he wanted to hold on to something like sanity. “Anyway, he had this whole plan I didn’t really get at the time, and it was getting thrown off when I kept refusing to fight – that was all you, by the way, well done getting us into this,” he said pointedly to Ven.  
  
He continued, “He brought a bunch of Heartless to force the issue, but I still didn’t behave, so… I don’t really remember what happened then.” What he did remember was on the list of things he couldn’t think about, had never been able to think about, without getting sick, and if he got sick again now he would never stop. “The next thing I knew, I was standing up and my body was on the ground.”  
  
The Master glowered down at him some more. “Ventus’s heart was consumed by darkness, and you were formed. That does not mean that you exist, nor that Master Xehanort is to blame, save through negligence.”  
  
“That – but – he told me to! How is that not his fault?” The Master was just as much a hypocrite as Vanitas had always thought. Master Xehanort could throw darkness around all he liked without being in the wrong, but if Vanitas so much as called his Keyblade, he was a dangerous threat. It was about time he admitted that different rules applied to Masters and lesser persons.  
  
“You should not have obeyed such an order.”  
  
Vanitas stared at him blankly. That made no sense, less than no sense. A Master was to be obeyed. If he didn’t obey, he would be punished until he did. That was how it worked, even here with their soft ideas of punishment. He was supposed to obey a Master’s orders without question, especially his Master’s, the person he owed everything to. His disobedience was what had gotten him into this mess. Besides, the Master was ignoring what he actually said, again. It was ridiculous how much easier it had been to get him, to get them all, to believe a lie than the whole truth.  
  
“I didn’t,” he said, slowly this time in case the Master had suddenly become hard of hearing. “That was the problem. The Heartless –” His stomach lurched when he thought of them. He couldn’t say it. As long as it was never spoken of, never even really thought of, it wasn’t quite real and didn’t quite matter. “Master Xehanort –” That wasn’t quite as bad as the Heartless, but he couldn’t think of it either, of what had happened, what Master Xehanort had done, on that day, without wanting to be sick, and he didn’t dare be sick, not again. Instead, he thought of a different day, later on, a day that was okay to think about. “He told me, okay? That’s how I know it was him and not just a thing that happened. He told me later on.”  
  
“Later on?” said Aqua. “I thought you ran away.”  
  
“Eventually. The night I came here. I got sick of waiting for everything. I thought I could just take my body back and it would be like nothing had happened. He didn’t want me to, kept telling me to wait, I wasn’t ready yet. I thought that was just words, because he thought you were too weak then to put up a fight, and if I was stronger then he wouldn’t get his chi-blade out of it.”  
  
“Where did you hear of that?” the Master asked sharply.  
  
“Isn’t it obvious? He told me. He told me that before, even, when there was just one of me. He wanted me to make it for him, because blah blah darkness blah blah light blah blah I stopped paying attention pretty fast.” He’d been punished for it, but the bruises had been less painful than listening by a long way. He’d learned quickly enough how to pretend to be listening until the oration worked back around to specifics.  
  
The Master was shaking his head. Vanitas hunched his shoulders defensively. “Go ahead and don’t believe me, if you want, but if you’re not going to listen can you just kill me and get it over with?”  
  
“He’s not going to kill you.” Aqua said. She sounded far more confident than circumstances warranted. If Vanitas didn’t have anything to offer that was worth his life, the Master would get rid of him first and worry about his students’ feelings later.  
  
Terra was nodding along. It was the most disgusting thing Vanitas had ever seen, how those two stuck together sometimes without even talking about it, like there was only one brain between them. There probably was, too. “What is a chi-blade?” he asked.  
  
The Master answered while Vanitas was still wondering what they had lessons in, if they didn’t learn anything of use. This wasn’t that obscure, surely. “A chi-blade is a legendary Keyblade, said to be forged by the conflict of light against an equal darkness. Once created, it alone is capable of opening the way to Kingdom Hearts. When last this occurred, the Keyblade War was fought over control of the heart of the worlds.”  
  
“Then why would you _want_ it?” Ven asked. Vanitas shrugged. He’d never understood that part himself, never been asked to care. Master Xehanort had wanted it; that had been all he had needed to know.  
  
“Xehanort was always fascinated by the Keyblade War,” said the Master. “He believed that recreating it was the key to understanding much that is now obscure, about its causes and effects.”  
  
Aqua was the one to say what they were all, Vanitas was sure, thinking. “But that’s insane!” She went on, “Just think of the lives that were lost, the damage to the worlds – how could anyone want that to happen again?”  
  
Vanitas didn’t care about the damage to the worlds or the people who would die. People were always dying. It was their most common activity. What confused him was that Master Xehanort would never start a war just to see what would happen. If he started a war, it was because he meant to win it. At least, that was how Vanitas had always seen him. He said as much. “The winner has the power to remake the worlds, any way they want.” He wasn’t going to lie and say that the idea had no appeal for him. If he had the power of Kingdom Hearts, he could fix himself. It seemed like nothing less would do.  
  
“But that’s horrible! What if someone evil wins, and they make the worlds into a mess?” Ven clearly didn’t see it that way, but then, he had been the one who’d been afraid. Maybe at the time he had been right to be. After all, back then it had been possible for things to get worse.  
  
“The worlds are already a mess,” Vanitas pointed out. The worlds were a mess, and he was a mess, and there was very little odds, as he saw it, that a Keyblade War would make either of these things worse, particularly the second.  
  
“Yes, and they are as they are because of the first Keyblade War,” said the Master. Vanitas blinked; he hadn’t known that. Master Xehanort had never, now he thought about it, talked about what the Keyblade War really was, other than something hugely obscure that Vanitas – that Ventus – was going to be instrumental in bringing about. “The Keyblade War threatened to consume all the worlds in darkness. Only by bordering each world in impenetrable walls was this disaster prevented. That is why it is vitally important to preserve the world order, as you know.”  
  
Vanitas did not know this, but the others were nodding. It must be something they heard about in the lessons Vanitas was not allowed to attend. He avoided resentment with an effort, by getting back to his interrupted confession. It wasn’t going to do him any good now to know about the structure of the worlds, anyway.  
  
“That’s what he wanted. But it didn’t work out, because you were too scared to fight back. So he forced the issue with the Heartless, and then when that didn’t work either, he forced it the rest of the way.” Vanitas shrugged. “He said he split me, us, in two, but it didn’t work the way he thought it would. The light half was too small and weak, and it kept falling farther and farther apart. So he went off with my body to get rid of it.”  
  
He tried not to think of that either. That first pain had been the worst, because he hadn’t been expecting it. He had never been outside his body before. He hadn’t known, maybe even Master Xehanort hadn’t known, how closely he was still connected. It had still been his body. He had let a whole host of emotions free, then. That had been the first time it had happened.  
  
“I’m not just a body,” Ven said petulantly.  
  
“You were at the time. Or maybe he just thought you were. Or maybe he knew all along and just told me otherwise, so that…I don’t know. So that something. I’d ask you if you remember what you were like, but you don’t remember anything. Lucky you.”  
  
That shut Ven up, but the Master was far less easy to silence. “You claim that he told you all this from the very first?”  
  
Vanitas nodded. “I asked him what had happened, and he told me. He told me he’d done it on purpose, to make me stronger.”  
  
A hand falling on his shoulder made him jump, but it was only Aqua. She was still feeling her injury: he could see pain on her face. Surely the healing should have mended that. She smiled all the same. He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but it was nice to be reminded that she was there and at least partly on his side. He had to believe she meant it now. She was enough on his side to want him to live even if her Master said he should die. That was strange, but not in as unpleasant a way as he had thought relying on someone would be.  
  
“Yet you have nothing but your word to support your claim, is this not so?” said the Master.  
  
Vanitas thought he was weakening, despite the words. The Master was no longer dismissing his words as impossible, or as lies just because he was the one saying them. “He only has his word too,” he pointed out. Impertinence or not, to put himself on a level with a Master, it was his only chance of – he wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t sure what it was that he hoped for. Of getting out of this alive, perhaps. Of being really believed, for once. Of telling the whole truth, everything he’d been shutting up inside his mouth all this time. It felt good on its own to tell the whole thing, whether or not anyone listened.  
  
The Master didn’t strike him, or even berate him, for the words. Instead, he nodded gravely. “Go on,” he said. “Explain, if your story is true, how Ventus came to be here and whole.”  
  
“…I don’t know,” Vanitas admitted. “He went away, and it hurt, but then I felt…strange.” At first being separated from his body had been just that, being outside of it and watching it die. He had still been able to feel it, he remembered when he thought back, when Master Xehanort had taken it away, felt it like it belonged to him completely. That had changed, after it had gone to a different world. He’d never gotten that feeling back, not even when he’d been so close to climbing right inside his heart again.  
  
“Then when he came back, he said there had been a change of plan. Instead of – I don’t remember, instead of whatever he was going to do with me, he said I could get my body back. Eventually. If I did what he said and got strong enough, and if the other half got strong enough to survive.” He tried not to remember how scared he had been, when Master Xehanort had come back. Masters were frightening and powerful beings. No one needed to hear that he had been scared. He was supposed to be scared of a Master; it wasn’t worth reporting. “So he kept me as a pupil.”  
  
The Master was nodding again. That was good. If he didn’t believe Vanitas at least a little, he would be saying so. Instead, he was saying, “He trained you in the use of the darkness.”  
  
“Yeah.” Vanitas hadn’t learned as much as he should have. If he had been a better student, he wondered, would he still be there? Would his Master still – He choked the sickness down again.  
  
“And yet you came here, without your Master’s permission?”  
  
“…Yeah.” Vanitas braced himself. A runaway apprentice should be returned to the master, forcibly if necessary. That was the law of all the worlds he knew. The Master might decide to follow it, as a neat way to get him out of sight, but if Master Xehanort refused to take him back, there would be nowhere else he could go. And if he _did_ take him back… It wouldn’t be so bad, he told himself. He could live on his own. He didn’t need a Master or anyone to take care of him.  
  
But the Master merely said, “How did you find this world? It was not meant to be readily accessible without knowledge, more so than most worlds. It is hard to believe that you just happened to stumble on it.”  
  
“But my body was here,” said Vanitas. Surely that was obvious. “It wasn’t that hard to find. What, did you think I wouldn’t know where it was? It’s _mine_. Do you forget where _your_ body is?” That was how he had known it was his, still. It was better than a compass, even now.  
  
“It’s not yours anymore,” Terra said. “You can’t just take it.”  
  
Vanitas couldn’t be angry, so he laughed instead. “I didn’t know that at the time, now did I? _He_ didn’t tell me there was still anybody home, that’s for sure. So I got impatient and ran off to get it back, and you know the rest.” He spread his hands in an exaggerated helpless gesture, concealing as best he could the wince as the motion pulled on his wounded shoulder.  
  
“And then we found you in Ven’s room yelling at him while he was asleep,” said Aqua. She sounded like she might be on the verge of laughing in a much less angry way.  
  
He glared at her. He didn’t think it had been very funny at all, to get to the place he’d been thinking of ever since that day and then to be thwarted at the very last possible inch. Of course he had yelled. The light had kicked him out of his place, had turned on him even though it was him. Such things were worth yelling about.  
  
He turned to glare at Ven, too. He was a thief and a betrayer, and that would never stop stinging. He could have expected all the rest, but not that. He was supposed to be able to trust himself.  
  
“And this is the whole truth, now?” asked the Master.  
  
He shrugged his good shoulder. “The interesting bits.” Except for the ones he couldn’t possibly think about without falling apart again, but the others could just deal with not hearing about those. He had to deal with it too.  
  
“What about the monsters?” asked Terra. “Do they really come from you?”  
  
“You saw; where do you think they come from?” he said snidely. What other possible meaning could the way he’d broken down in front of anyone have? It boggled his mind how slow these people could be sometimes, all the time except for when he particularly wanted them to miss something. “I didn’t say he lied about _everything_.”  
  
“But how?” said Aqua.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said for far too many times that day. “They just – do.”  
  
“Did that happen before we were different people?” Ven asked, his tone carrying nothing but simple curiosity.  
  
“No, of course not!”  
  
“Well, I don’t know that!”  
  
“It should be obvious. There weren’t any before that happened. Everyone knows that.”  
  
The Master sighed audibly. “The Unversed did appear only relatively recently. Yen Sid first mentioned them not long after Ventus came here. They are certainly new to the fabric of the worlds.”  
  
“So you made all of them?” Aqua asked. She looked hurt, as though Vanitas had been sick to spite her. He almost wanted to be sick right then and see how much fun she thought it looked like. Maybe it didn’t look as bad as it felt.  
  
“I don’t know; I wasn’t counting,” he snarled. Considering all the times he had been so sick he had passed out or lost time, he couldn’t say how many he might have let go, or where they might be. “Probably.”  
  
Ven was the one who asked, “Why do you make them so much? I thought you liked it here.”  
  
There were so many things wrong with that statement that Vanitas opened and shut his mouth for a second before picking one. “I don’t do it on _purpose_! Why would I – did it look like I was having _fun_ to you?”  
  
The only way he could manage to keep the sick feeling inside was to reach out and see through the eyes of his emotions outside the castle. There were more of them every time he looked, of course. Focusing on just one pair of eyes took all his attention and kept the sick feeling at bay.  
  
There was someone touching his real body, he realized when he felt safe enough to let go. Hands, and more than one pair. Right now, the feeling wasn’t as bad as it usually was. It was a nice reminder that one of the many bodies he could feel from the inside was his more than the others. He didn’t have to look around for the right one to come back to.  
  
When he opened his eyes, he discovered that they were all touching him. Or Ven and Aqua and Terra were, anyway. That explained why he felt so comfortable. Being in contact with his body wasn’t the same as being back in it, but it was better than being separate. He peeled Terra’s hands off his arm, then Aqua’s off his knee, but Ven’s he left where they were. He wasn’t going to complain about that.  
  
“Are you okay?” Aqua sounded nervous. That was annoying, he thought. She should stop. He hadn’t lost control, not even with one little frustration. He would have noticed that. She had no reason to be nervous that she hadn’t had a minute ago, and there was no reason for her to be nervous if she was going to go touching him.  
  
“…Fine. Why?” It wasn’t just her: Terra was giving him the same sidelong look, like he was about to flip out again. As for the Master, he was looking at Vanitas and Ven both like they had done something.  
  
“Do you always react to Ventus’s proximity this way?” asked the Master.  
  
Vanitas tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He didn’t duck out from under the contact, but only because that would be showing weakness. They didn’t have to know about the  
ache that only went away when he was touching his body. That would just give them a way to hurt him without hurting Ven.  
  
“You’re covered in shadows,” Terra said. “Can’t you see them?”  
  
Vanitas looked down at his body. It looked as it had a minute before. There were no shadows he could see, except for the ones he cast on himself, the way normal people did. They couldn’t mean those. “What? No, I’m not.” He wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t even angry. There was no reason for the darkness to be leaking that he didn’t have all the time, and if he leaked all the time, they would have noticed it long ago.  
  
“What are you talking about? He looks normal.” Ven sounded as confused as Vanitas felt. If the others were gaslighting him for some reason, they hadn’t told Ven about it at least.  
  
He didn’t, really, think they were gaslighting him. They weren’t good enough liars. Unless they had been acting all this time, but that made less sense than the idea that they meant it, which was an achievement. The way Aqua edged back from him just a little couldn’t be faked. He swallowed down the bile of fear in his throat. It wasn’t really a problem. There wasn’t anything wrong with him he didn’t know about.  
  
“Ven, you’re shining. Can you not see that either?” said Aqua.  
  
Vanitas blinked and looked at Ven more carefully. He didn’t see a glow. His body looked perfectly normal, healthy and welcoming and taunting, just like that morning and just like a month before.  
  
“What’re you trying to pull?” he asked the Master, suspicious again. Making people see things was the kind of thing no one but a Master could do. Lying to Aqua and Terra about what he was and what he did to their precious Ven might change their minds about standing up for him. There could be things a Master could do to him that wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t kill Ven. If he were unconscious, he wouldn’t be sick. He wouldn’t be anything. The Master could keep him locked up inside his mind, force him away from the only body he had, so that Ven could go about his life without being bothered by Vanitas and his problems.  
  
He had to breathe carefully through the fear, or it would try to devour him. Right now, it would succeed. He had to think, not feel. He had to be ready to counter whatever the Master might say, so that maybe, just maybe, he could survive even this.  
  
The Master just sighed and glowered at them both some more. It was Terra who said, “He’s not doing anything! You and Ven, when you touch, you both show your light and darkness, ever since we first saw you.”  
  
“You’re lying.” There couldn’t be something going on with him that he didn’t know about. There just couldn’t. He was the one who knew what was true and what wasn’t.  
  
Aqua shook her head. “That very first time, when you were touching Ven, he started to glow, and you were covered in darkness. And then, later…I thought you knew.”  
  
He shook his head. He hadn’t known. He didn’t know. He wouldn’t believe it. It was a lie they were making up for some reason. He might not know the reason, but he didn’t have to in order to avoid the lie.  
  
“It’s not true,” he insisted, more for his own benefit than for anyone else’s. “You’re lying. I’m not doing anything.” When it had happened that one time before, he’d been angry, exerting all his strength to grab ahold of his Keyblade, including his darkness. It didn’t just _happen_. He had more self-control than that.  
  
Aqua and Terra looked at him with sad expressions. He wanted to be angry. They had no right to look at him like that when they were lying to him, and lying about him which was worse. He was not helpless. He was not weak. There was nothing there for them to look at so sadly.  
  
The Master said, “It is clear to me that there is yet more to this story than anyone has told. A judgment at this time would be premature. Ventus, I wish to look into the state of your heart personally. The task has clearly been too long delayed.”  
  
Ven nodded. Vanitas was reassured, but only slightly. “What about me?”  
  
Instead of answering, the Master swung his Keyblade through a smooth swirl of motion. Vanitas felt the spell before it took its full effect: sleep. It was as he’d tried not to fear, then. He stopped resisting the sickness, but before any of his emotions could rip free, his mind blurred and his eyes slipped shut despite themselves.  
  
He did not expect to wake.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Ven felt strange and shaky on his feet when Master Eraqus’s examination was done, but he held tightly onto the Master’s words of reassurance as he ran back up the stairs as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn’t want to be alone any longer than he had to right now.  
  
He banged Vanitas’s door carelessly open as he sped through it. Vanitas hadn’t woken up yet, but Terra and Aqua were there anyway, sitting on the floor next to the bed. They weren’t talking or anything, just looking at each other and Vanitas with nothing to say at all, or maybe too much to say and no place to begin that didn’t need them to have been other places first. That was how Ven felt.  
  
They looked up for Ven, though.  
  
“Ven!”  
  
“Are you okay?” said Terra, starting to rise to his feet.  
  
Ven flopped down half on top of him before he could stand up properly. “I’m fine,” he reassured his friends. Sometimes he felt like they worried about him too much, but right now he didn’t feel like it was possible to worry enough. “The Master says he can see where my heart was broken, but it got patched up, sort of, and it’s getting better on its own now.”  
  
“Thank goodness!” Aqua said. Terra didn’t say anything, but Ven could feel him relax, not all the way, but a bit.  
  
Ven nodded. “He said he would come up later, but he had to think about what he found out first.” That was a little bit worrying – what if Master Eraqus hadn’t told him everything, and something else was wrong? – but mostly it was hopeful. The Master could fix any problem. That was what a Master was for.  
  
He reached up without really thinking about it and pulled Vanitas’s hand off the bed so that it rested against his shoulder. That was even more relaxing than being with his other friends. The whole time he’d been with Master Eraqus, he had been able to feel, now that he was looking for it, Vanitas’s body upstairs, a hollow feeling like a missing tooth.  
  
From the look on their faces, he was the only one to find it relaxing. “Is it happening again?”  
  
Aqua nodded. “You’re all light and he’s…really dark. It looks strange. You should probably avoid touching him, until we know more about what’s really happening to both of you.”  
  
“I don’t want to.” He probably sounded like a little kid whining, but he didn’t really care. “I promise I’m not doing anything, and he _can’t_.”  
  
“Why is it so important?” Terra asked.  
  
Ven waved his hands, trying to put the feeling into words. “It just…feels better. Like I don’t miss him most of the time, but he misses me and I feel that, so when we’re touching I feel better because he does.”  
  
“If you’re sure you’re okay,” said Terra.  
  
Ven nodded, then hesitated. “Can we wake him up? This is weird. And I want to talk with him, without everything being so – so complicated and fast.”  
  
They hesitated. “The Master said to let him sleep,” Aqua said slowly.  
  
“It’s safer for everyone that way, so he can’t do anything if he wants to, or if it does just happen and he can’t control it,” agreed Terra.  
  
Ven thought of the monsters. They’d poured out of Vanitas like nothing else he’d ever seen, so much darkness all given form at once. His head had been splitting with it, and he’d felt sick, horribly sick and alone and terrified and angry. He wondered, now that it was gone, why he’d felt that way. It had been so confused, and everything had hurt, but there hadn’t been any reason for him to be _angry_. He supposed that that had been Vanitas hurting, because nothing had hit him, not even a monster. The pain had gotten worse and worse, and then Vanitas had collapsed and it had stopped all of a sudden, like slamming a door shut.  
  
When he’d woken up, it had come back, but fainter, like sound through walls. Ven had felt everything muted, that whole time, compared to what he had felt before, all but the end.  
  
That was what Vanitas had been feeling. Maybe it was because he had been so close, or maybe it was just that he had been paying attention, but Ven knew as sure as he knew his own name that Vanitas had been terrified just before falling asleep. He’d been terrified _of_ falling asleep. It wasn’t, couldn’t be, right to leave him like that when they didn’t absolutely have to.  
  
“We should wake him up,” he said, firmly. “It’s not fair to make him sleep while we’re talking about him.” The rest of it he didn’t know how to put into words without sounding strange, but he was as certain as certain could be.  
  
It didn’t take much to wake Vanitas, in the end. The spell had been weakened, Aqua said, over time. It wouldn’t have kept him asleep for much longer, anyway. As it was, Ven sat on him and shook him by the shoulders until he stirred, blinked, and tried to flip Ven off the bed.  
  
“Oh,” Vanitas mumbled. “I’m alive. Weird.”  
  
Ven blinked at him, distracted enough that Vanitas’s next attempt at throwing him off worked much better, and he landed on the rug with a thump. “Of course you’re alive!”  
  
“Yeah, well done and all.” That was a strange thing to say, but what Vanitas said next was stranger. “How long has it been this time?”  
  
Aqua said, “You were asleep for a few hours, that’s all.” She didn’t sound like she thought it was a strange thing to say at all.  
  
“Oh. Why?”  
  
“The Master put you to sleep again,” Ven said. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It had been better for him, not feeling so many things coming from someone else, but it had felt wrong too, like Vanitas was there and gone at the same time.  
  
“I know that,” Vanitas said. He sounded frustrated, but Ven couldn’t really tell. He wasn’t feeling Vanitas’s emotions anymore, now that they weren’t touching. The ache was back, though. He could feel that much. “Why did you let me wake up?”  
  
“…What?” That didn’t make sense for Vanitas to say. Nothing he said or did made sense. There was one way to force him to, though.  
  
Ven shot his hand out and grabbed Vanitas by the arm.  
  
It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense at all. Ven could feel so many emotions, pouring around him, and all of them unpleasant. It felt like the things he felt more strongly – fear, confusion, pain so much stronger than there was any reason for – were moving on their own, or trying to, but underneath that there was so much else he couldn’t begin to break down into whole thoughts. His shoulder throbbed: that was the most coherent thing he felt. He could feel heartbeats, echoing, not quite in step. He could feel wanting to scream run away fight cry demand answers –  
  
He didn’t let go, but Vanitas pried his hand off and dropped it, and the sensation abated to a tiny pulse he could barely even detect, compared to the overwhelming flood of a second before.  
  
“I didn’t do that,” Vanitas said, not to Ven but to the others. Ven didn’t understand why he was saying that. Of course he hadn’t done anything. It was silly to think he might have. Ven was the one who had grabbed him. Unless, he guessed, there were more things going on that he couldn’t see.  
  
“I know you didn’t,” said Aqua. Ven had to force his eyes to stop looking at nothing and focus on her instead. She wasn’t happy. He probably shouldn’t have grabbed at Vanitas like that when he was awake. It was probably rude, especially when he knew that Vanitas didn’t like it.  
  
He wanted to grab Vanitas’s hand back, make the ache go away again, but he didn’t. It wasn’t nice to grab people without asking, even if they were kind of the same person.  
  
Vanitas sounded confused, but even having felt so much of him, Ven still didn’t know why. “You didn’t answer my question. What am I awake for?”  
  
“Why wouldn’t you be awake?” Aqua asked. “The spell doesn’t last that long, and Ven wanted to talk to you.”  
  
“But why did you _let_ him? If you kept me asleep I couldn’t do anything or feel anything or get darkness all over or any of those things you don’t like so much. It would be perfect for you. You could have just Ven, the way you always wanted.” He sounded lost, as well as confused. Ven wasn’t sure why he was saying such horrible things. He could barely understand what the words were supposed to mean, and what he did understand still didn’t make sense. They wouldn’t have left Vanitas asleep. That wouldn’t be perfect. That wouldn’t be perfect at all.  
  
“That’s not true!” said Aqua. Terra shook his head, agreeing. “It’s not like that. You’re our friend too, Vanitas.”  
  
Vanitas’s lip twisted into an ugly expression. He looked like he was about to fight them again, even though he was just sitting up on the bed. “I’m your prisoner. You just don’t know how to keep one.”  
  
Aqua looked devastated. Ven almost hated Vanitas, just for putting that look on her face. Her eyes went wide, and her lips turned down at the corners as she said, “Is that really what you’ve been thinking all this time?”  
  
“It’s the truth,” Vanitas insisted. “Your Master decided to keep me here because you were too soft to kill me the way he should have for the sake of his precious balance. You didn’t want me to learn anything or go anywhere or do anything. What else do you call that?”  
  
“It’s not soft,” said Terra, quiet but angry in a way Ven hadn’t seen him before today, but today kept seeing again and again. “You didn’t do anything to deserve _that_. We’re not that kind of people.”  
  
“I made the Unversed,” Vanitas replied, curling over his bent knees. “I made the big one that almost killed you that first night, and all the ones since. I kept making more and more every day, every single day you left me alone. You didn’t _know_ what I deserve.”  
  
Terra flinched and looked down, but Aqua picked up the argument smoothly. “But you didn’t make them on purpose, did you?”  
  
“What does that matter?”  
  
Ven wondered if being the same person should be helping him understand Vanitas, or if perhaps it just made it harder. What Vanitas was should be half of him, but he had no idea what he was thinking. Maybe that was why he didn’t understand: maybe he couldn’t understand Vanitas no matter what, because they were split in half and had nothing in common at all.  
  
“Of course it matters!” he said, but when Vanitas looked at him expectantly, he couldn’t find the words to explain why. It mattered, obviously it mattered, if Vanitas was making monsters on purpose to hurt people or if it was just a thing that happened that he couldn’t help, but he couldn’t explain it. It was too obvious. Except, apparently, to Vanitas it wasn’t.  
  
Aqua was the one who could explain. She said, “That’s just a problem you have, not a part of you. You should have told us at the beginning, so the Master could help you.”  
  
Vanitas laughed his horrible un-laugh. “So the Master could kill me.”  
  
Ven flinched and ducked his head. He didn’t want to think about that. If he could forget about it, he would. He saw Aqua flinch too from the corner of his eye. It wasn’t fair that she had been hurt, that anyone had been hurt.  
  
“He’s not going to kill you,” Terra said. Ven held the words close. Terra wouldn’t lie to him, so if he said it was going to be okay, then it would be. “He’ll find a way to fix it, so you don’t hurt anymore and you and Ven can be separate.”  
  
The worst part of the look on Vanitas’s face was the tight set of his shoulders below. He didn’t believe Terra, or if he did it didn’t help. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t any kind of right.  
  
“I told him what was wrong with me the first day I saw him,” Vanitas said. “He didn’t care then. He doesn’t care now.”  
  
That, Ven could say for sure wasn’t true. “He cares! And he told me, now that he knows what happened to me for sure, he can do things he couldn’t do before without knowing what was wrong. He can fix you too.”  
  
“What if I don’t want to be ‘fixed’? What if I’d rather be like this? What will you do then?”  
  
That might work on other people, but it didn’t work on Ven. It couldn’t work on him, not after today. He might not understand Vanitas completely, but he understood him better than that. He said, thinking back, the volume of his voice dropping of its own accord, “But you don’t like it. No one _could_ like it, hurting all the time like that. You don’t have to pretend.”  
  
This time it was Vanitas who flinched, as if Ven had yelled. He didn’t say anything back at all, just looked down at his legs again. Ven knew he was right, but he still felt bad for having said it. He didn’t want to hurt Vanitas any more than he had already been hurt. That was a lot, he was having to realize. It was more than anyone should have to be hurt.  
  
He leaned back against the bed, just close enough that his head brushed against Vanitas’s ankle. It hurt, still, to touch him, but he ignored it. He could handle this little bit of pain that wasn’t his, if it meant salving even a fraction of the pain Vanitas felt all the time.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
When the Master opened the door, Vanitas scrambled back out of Ven’s reach. He didn’t want anyone else knowing that he was scared. They couldn’t be allowed to know that he was weak.  
  
The Master looked tired; that was in its way more frightening than all the rest. A Master should not be tired. A Master should not be weak. If the Master was weary after doing, when it came right down to it, so little, then there was something dreadfully awry. Vanitas resolved to be pleased, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Trying quelled the dread, however, so it was something of a success. The Master wasn’t glaring at him, either, for once. It was almost as unnerving as the weariness.  
  
Vanitas wondered despite himself if he had really slept for only a few hours. Too much had changed in too little time, it seemed to him. Everything was moving too quickly, and everyone yet more so, when they were hard to follow at ordinary times. There was no knowing where they might end up.  
  
He couldn’t hope. He wouldn’t hope. That would only crush him later. He knew better than that.  
  
“Master?” Aqua got up, looking concerned. So he wasn’t the only one unnerved.  
  
“Is something wrong?” Terra hovered over Ven again. He was blocking Vanitas’s view of the doorway – but, on the other hand, he was blocking the Master’s view of Vanitas. Vanitas could live with that.  
  
“Much, it appears, but nothing new. Ventus, as I told you, you are on the mend. As far as that goes, it is certainly clear that your heart was fractured in the past. From what I can discern of the damage at the time, it was a true split, not a splinter, far closer to Vanitas’s description of events than to Master Xehanort’s.”  
  
Vanitas let his guard lower, just a trifle. That sounded very much as though the Master truly believed him now. He tried to scoot subtly around Terra to get a better look at the Master’s face, in case there was some vital clue to be found there.  
  
The Master sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “The acute damage was quite severe. Where a mild loss is sealed over rapidly by the remaining majority of the heart, which then heals inward, in this case the gap was so large that it caused a cascading reaction. Your heart would have been unable to heal, and should have continued to bleed indefinitely.”  
  
From the sound Ven made, Terra’s hands had tightened on his shoulders enough to hurt. Vanitas ignored the faint echoing twinge in his own shoulders. No one was clinging on to him, and that was fine.  
  
“This is not,” the Master continued, “what happened. I cannot say precisely how it came about, but some other heart has linked its light with yours, fitting itself into the empty space and preventing any further loss.”  
  
Another heart? Vanitas wanted to dismiss it – who could have done such a thing? – but he forced himself to consider it seriously instead. That would explain the feeling of running headfirst into strange and hostile territory on his very doorstep, the last time he had tried to get back inside his heart. That would explain why Ven had suddenly stopped dying, why he didn’t seem as affected by Vanitas as Vanitas was by him. He really was someone else, at least in part.  
  
“Another…heart?” Ven echoed Vanitas’s thoughts, pressing a hand to his chest. “Whose heart?”  
  
“That I do not know. It happened before you arrived here. I suspect only Master Xehanort knows where it happened, and even he may not know whose heart joined itself with yours. It does not seem to have been his intention. I suggest you take the gift for what it is worth: your heart, given time, will heal itself completely. The damage has already been greatly reduced.  
  
“Which brings me to you, Vanitas.” Vanitas sat very still as the Master’s eyes raked over him. He didn’t want to meet that gaze, for fear of what it would find, what it would do if it once uncovered how closely he was hanging onto every word. “Your fraction – half, or close to half, and augmented immediately by darkness from your surroundings – was _not_ healed. Neither, however, did it fade. Not having looked at your heart closely, I cannot be sure, but I suspect that it has been protected to a degree by the darkness you are steeped in. It, along with the emotions that inspire it, does indeed drain away in the form of the Unversed, but it is also quick to replenish itself. For this reason, your memories and will have not been lost.”  
  
“And you say darkness never did anything good,” Vanitas muttered before he thought to stop himself.  
  
The Master didn’t grow angry, however, only inclined his head and continued, “Be that as it may, your darkness is consuming you. A heart with only darkness is not and cannot be in balance, and your heart in addition is imbalanced by this injury. It will continue to produce Unversed perpetually, and the erosion will not abate until it has consumed you.”  
  
Vanitas froze. He knew that it was hopeless, but it was another thing to hear a Master, having investigated everything so carefully, say so. He had not realized how much he had hoped despite himself that the Master would prove to be everything that his students thought him.  
  
If he couldn’t be fixed, then the Master would kill him. Maybe that was why he looked so tired. Maybe it was because he was anticipating a fight with his students and killing Ven, whom he liked, by proxy. Maybe it wouldn’t kill Ven at all, Vanitas thought, his stomach sinking yet further. If his heart was tied to somebody else’s, then maybe he could survive Vanitas after all. If so, then Aqua and Terra would agree and step aside, and he would have lost his only defense.  
  
He wondered if he would care, if he could afford it. He couldn’t tell. He had trouble knowing what he wanted to feel when he was holding back a large surge of emotions and didn’t dare risk setting them off.  
  
Aqua came to the same conclusion he had. He could tell by her voice, fast and sharp, when she said, “Master, can you fix him, like Ven, with a spell?”  
  
The Master shook his head. Vanitas felt a scream coming closer and closer in his throat. He was about to let it go, along with everything else, when the Master said, “There is no spell or technique for sharing hearts, not as such. It is both simpler and more difficult than that. No one cast a spell on Ventus to allow him to share their heart. It was an act of will, no more and no less. Yet it must have been someone very young, for hearts protect themselves from mingling too easily. A heart knows where it belongs, and it will reject a forcible connection with a heart it is not already very close to indeed. Unless the person was someone who already knew and cared for Ventus deeply –” Vanitas shook his head. There hadn’t been anyone like that, not among the living. Not at the time, at least. He was starting to wonder, now. They might really mean that they cared for Ven. “– then it must have been a heart that was still new and vulnerable, yet also a heart that chose to share itself freely with a stranger. That is no common thing.”  
  
“So there’s no way to fix me,” said Vanitas flatly. It was the height of cruelty, in his opinion, to practically force him to hope and then tear it away again.  
  
“There is one way,” said the Master, slowly and carefully. Vanitas was beginning to reconsider whether or not it was worth it to suppress his scream. “A Keyblade can unlock a heart and restore for a brief time its openness and vulnerability. If someone were to choose to bind their darkness to yours as the person who saved Ventus bound their light to his, then it would be possible to do the same for you that was done for him. But that would take a heart bearing a deep vein of darkness, yet willing to cast itself with you in good faith.” From the way he shook his head, he didn’t believe that any such heart existed.  
  
Vanitas wished he could claim otherwise. But really, the only person he was sure would do any such thing belonged wholly to the light. There was no darkness to merge if she wished it. From the way Aqua pressed her lips tightly together, he could see that she knew it too. Who else was there? Master Xehanort had repudiated him, and with his shoulder still aching and the memories still fresh, the very idea of giving that man any more powerful hold over Vanitas was almost enough on its own to make him sick with fear alone. The people in this room were all he had an claim on, and they weren’t enough. He shut his eyes and struggled to even his breathing before it and his emotions ran away with him. This was the end of it, then: a stupid ending, considering all the kinder times he could have died. It was typical that he would die now that he was almost sure they didn’t hate him.  
  
“I will.”  
  
He didn’t understand the words at first, didn’t place the voice as coming from outside of his own head. Then his eyes flew open and he stared in shock at the speaker.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Terra forced himself to stand straight: arms at his sides, shoulders back, head up, the way he had been taught. He wanted to shrink, to take up less space, as though that would possibly keep everyone’s eyes from turning to him, but he wasn’t supposed to do that. It wouldn’t work, anyway, not after what he’d said.  
  
“I will,” he repeated, looking straight across at Master Eraqus. If he tried, if he focused only on those eyes, he could almost ignore all the others. He could almost ignore Ven’s surprise and confusion.  
  
Master Eraqus wasn’t surprised, at least. He had to have known that Terra could do this, and that Terra was the only one. It hurt him, all the same. Terra could see that in the dip of his brows and the slight press of his lips. It was a disappointment. He didn’t like to be reminded that Terra was different. But this, right now, was more important than that.  
  
“ _You_?” Of the two who were truly surprised, Vanitas was the one to recover his voice first. “You think you can –”  
  
“Yes.” He tried not to let his voice shake. He could do this. He had to do this. He couldn’t let Vanitas die, or worse. That was far more important than rejecting the darkness. It felt like a betrayal of his Master’s teachings, even thinking that. It was the most important thing possible to keep the darkness hidden out of reach, to never speak of it, never acknowledge it. If he were a better student, he would believe that completely. If he were a better student, he would be able to put it into practice.  
  
Ven was looking at him still, confused while Vanitas was starting to catch on, to laugh quietly to himself. “So there’s a dark secret hidden in all this light after all,” said Vanitas, sounding pleased. Terra flinched.  
  
“Terra?” Ven didn’t understand, but he would. Sooner or later, he would understand what Terra hadn’t been telling him all this time.  
  
Master Eraqus just nodded. “We will do this in the heart chamber. It is most thoroughly warded against any outside influence. This will leave you vulnerable to any such, while it lasts.”  
  
Vanitas stopped laughing. “What’s the heart chamber?” he asked.  
  
“You will see shortly,” said Master Eraqus. “For now, go to the audience hall. We will join you there.”  
  
“I’ll take him,” Aqua said quickly. Rather than leave the room, though, she stepped further inside, close enough to Terra that he could feel her breath on his throat when she took him by the arms.  
  
“Thank you,” she whispered, so softly that even in the small room no one else could hear. Terra started. She had no reason to thank him for anything. Before he could tell her as much, before he could respond at all, she squeezed his arms quickly and then let go. “Come on, Vanitas,” she said more audibly. Vanitas came on, throwing a smirk at Terra as he did. That was much as he had expected, but it wasn’t what he had feared.  
  
What he had feared was the moment when Ven understood that if Terra could mend Vanitas’s darkness, it was only with a powerful darkness of his own. Terra had hoped, foolish though he knew it was, that Ven might never have to find out. He saw how much Ven looked up to him. It was going to hurt Ven to know the truth, that the person he admired wasn’t worthy of admiration at all. (It was going to hurt Terra to lose that trust, but that was selfish.) He had dreamed, at times, of quelling his darkness for good before that happened. Well, it was too late now.  
  
He forced himself to look down at Ven’s face, but the concern was just the same as it had been, as though nothing had changed. “Terra?” He braced himself, but all Ven said was, “Can you really help him?”  
  
He nodded, and Ven smiled, as if that were the only thing that mattered. It was the only thing that mattered. It had to be.  
  
“Go on ahead, Ventus,” said Master Eraqus. “We’ll be there soon.”  
  
Ven hurried off without further ado, leaving Terra and the Master alone. Now Terra dropped his eyes to the rug. He knew all too well the disappointment that he would find in his Master’s features if he looked up. If he changed his mind, he could make that go away.  
  
If he changed his mind, Vanitas would be eaten by the darkness and his own emotions, or die on the point of a Keyblade for what had been done to him against his will. Terra clenched his jaw. Light did not leave people to suffer.  
  
“Terra.” Master Eraqus sounded disappointed indeed, sad and tired in a way that he only ever was when Terra failed to suppress his darkness. “Are you sure that this is what you want to do? There is no way of knowing how much such a connection to him would affect you. You are under no obligation.”  
  
Terra nodded, short and choppy. He couldn’t face anyone else, knowing that he had had a chance to save Vanitas and not taken it, no matter the cost. He couldn’t face himself.  
  
The Master sighed. “Very well. Let us finish this, then.”  
  
They didn’t speak on the way down to the hall.  
  
The others were already there, waiting. Aqua was in the middle of an explanation. “—unless it’s really important, to be extra safe.” She smiled at them, a little shakily but only a little. Terra didn’t have a smile to give back.  
  
Vanitas was watching him, but Ven asked, “So where is the heart chamber?”  
  
“Watch,” said Aqua, as Master Eraqus approached the back of the hall, behind the chairs of the masters.  
  
Drawing his Keyblade, he stood before a piece of wall that looked just like all the others – indeed, Terra could have sworn that he had never seen the door open behind the same stone twice – and moved his Keyblade through a complex series of motions too quickly for the eye to follow. The very world seemed to still, watching and waiting, until with a chime and a gentle pulse of light, the wall faded into nothingness.  
  
It seemed wrong, to be doing something like this in the heart chamber. It was a room dedicated completely to light, more so than any other place Terra had ever seen. The silver loops and chains of the myriad wards shone against the white of the room itself. He could feel the power in them as the door shut behind Aqua. More strongly, he could feel the heart. Here in this world, it was pure and untainted. Terra’s steps faltered. His darkness, the darkness he was about to surrender to, didn’t belong here.  
  
Vanitas felt it too, but it didn’t seem to stop him. He kept his head up and his steps light, all callous bravado. Still, Terra thought there was something hesitant in even that.  
  
Master Eraqus took up a position between both of them and the heart, where he could turn back any darkness that escaped or was set free to corrupt the heart, as it always would seek to do. “Are you both resolved to this?”  
  
Terra nodded. Vanitas, facing him, opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again and nodded silently as well.  
  
“Dark will be drawn to dark,” said the Master, “but that is not enough, even under these circumstances. You must will it, both of you, will your hearts to meet. Do you understand?” They both nodded again. “So be it.”  
  
He swung his Keyblade in a sharp arc, and the world shifted.  
  
It was bright, just a hair to the right side of being painful, but Terra wasn’t sure how he was seeing the brightness. He still felt his body, but where his heart was usually contained in it, now his body felt like it was contained in his heart, which was widening, spreading beyond the hollow where it usually rested. His eyes were still open, but he wasn’t using them to see. He couldn’t be, not with what he was seeing.  
  
He had learned how to look into other people’s light and darkness, but it had always been an effort, opening his heart’s perception and letting it seep into his vision. It had never been like this. The room glowed and pulsed with bright silver light that had to be the wards, but he could see them so much more completely than he ever had before. The world heart was brighter still, as golden and brilliant as the sun, too bright to look at directly. Master Eraqus was almost a shadow by comparison. Terra could see him, face and body and blade, the way he would with ordinary eyes, but he could also see the fountain of light that poured endlessly out of him. On the opposite side of the room, Aqua and Ven were the same. This was how they really looked, he thought, and it was the worst thing in the world in that moment to know that he might never see them this way again. As for Vanitas…  
  
Vanitas was the center of a pillar of darkness that seemed on the verge of piercing the ceiling. Terra could see his body in the middle of it, but it was small and indistinct, the way his own body felt. Instead, the darkness swirled and spun, held back by the light all around, the only shadow in the room.  
  
Not quite the only. Terra had not looked at himself, but he didn’t have to: he could feel his light racing to embrace his friends, but he could also feel his darkness, as surely as if he had summoned it forth deliberately, trying to do the same. It called to the darkness opposite. For once, once and never again he swore to himself, Terra gave it what it wanted. He reached out for Vanitas’s heart as Vanitas reached out for his, and everything went black.  
  
He was standing on (he thought) a tall platform in the middle of complete blackness. It should have frightened him, but he could feel that there was no evil in this night. There was nothing at all, just a strange sensation like the moment before a race began, or before a cloudburst, or in the moment of turning the first page of a book.  
  
There was someone else there, he realized. Out in the dark, barely at the edge of his senses, something throbbed like a half-healed broken bone. It ached to feel, the more because it wasn’t his and he was only feeling part of what had to be there. He yearned to be there, to quell it.  
  
He didn’t move, he was sure of it, but when he turned his mind to the source of the pain he was closer to it. He could perceive it more clearly now, and it hurt all the more now that he could understand it.  
  
The other platform was barely a platform at all. It had been, that much was clear: the circle, or parts of it, gleamed in all the colors of the rainbow. Terra could make out the image of a boy, familiar, Ven but not quite Ven, in black and white and grey, and around him symbols he couldn’t identify and didn’t particularly care to.  
  
It was the rest that was painful beyond imagining. All across the platform, the brilliant colors were spotted with holes, so close-set in some places that it seemed more hole than not. It was like a sieve, only worse, because a sieve was nothing but metal, but this was a _heart_ , a heart with so many little pieces taken out of it that it couldn’t possibly hold together. It should have caved in on itself at the slightest brush.  
  
That it did not was probably due to what was coming out of the holes – or going into them. Terra couldn’t be sure. He thought it was both. Everywhere the platform was pierced, darkness flowed, streaming around the whole in loops and knots, pouring out in one place only to dive back in in another. The streams branched and melded, an uncountable number diving off into the dark around and vanishing into the distance, but there were always more, one for each hole.  
  
He couldn’t see Vanitas anywhere.  
  
As Terra observed, one of the rivers of darkness arced up high in the night and plunged down again, but not into a hole this time. Instead, it struck the platform in one of the few places where the color was still smooth with the force of an immense arrow. It vanished into the depths of the platform, and now there was a new path for the rest of the darkness to follow. The night around him pulsed and screamed with agony.  
  
Terra ran to the edge of his platform, but the unplumbable depths below halted him there. _Vanitas!_ he screamed voicelessly into the night. _Vanitas! Where are you?_  
  
The answer was at least as loud, but it jumped and skipped like a scratched record. _Hel   e! n’t   I –_  
  
With an ominous crackle, a fountain of darkness burst from the side of the platform some distance down and streaked out into the night. Vanitas’s voice, if such it could be called, cut off on another scream.  
  
He had to get to him. It didn’t matter how. Terra looked down at the platform beneath his feet without truly seeing it. It wasn’t important. The only important thing was the impassable gap between it and Vanitas. There had to be a way to bridge that gap.  
  
His platform was split, he realized. There was a fault line running through the center, breaking the image into brighter and darker halves. It was the darker half that was closest to Vanitas’s platform, and it was from that half that the steps appeared. They didn’t glitter with the bright colors of gemstones; rather, their colors shone sullenly, like a smoothly polished rock. They curved up through the night toward the other platform, and Terra ran up them without thinking twice.  
  
As he jumped off the last step, a stream of darkness caught him and shoved him sideways toward the edge. He stumbled under the force of it, but when he got his feet under him and braced against it he found that he could stay where he was.  
  
There were no holes beneath his feet, he realized, though he was sure that when he’d looked, there had been no undamaged place large enough to stand. He looked down: the holes were still there, sure enough, but wherever he had touched the flow of darkness seemed to have stopped, suppressed by a glinting violet glaze that spread beneath his feet. That was his darkness, Terra thought. It was stopping Vanitas from being hurt any worse.  
  
It wasn’t enough. There was only a small piece of the platform covered, and even there it was only a temporary cover, he could tell that much. The darkness beneath was still writhing, trying to get through. Eventually, it would succeed. He had to think of something else.  
  
 _Vanitas!_ he called again. _Can you hear me? I’m here!_  
  
 _Ter a_ , the voice answered, a little clearer this time. _Me  ith wr ng  s s om t ing. I  an’t m ve._  
  
 _Where are you?_  
  
 _Su e no . I ‘s t o dark._  
  
Terra thought he could understand that, almost, though the jumble of out-of-order words and missing sounds took effort to pull meaning out of. If he couldn’t tell where he was because it was dark, then he could be – Terra quested around hastily with all his senses – almost anywhere. The dark outside was one thing, and didn’t seem to prevent him from perceiving what was nearby, but the darkness pouring around the platform was another thing entirely. It was thick and viscous and completely opaque. Vanitas might be anywhere, inside or wrapped up in or drowning beneath that darkness.  
  
Terra took a few struggling steps forward against the flow of darkness. Behind him a few more holes were closed over.  
  
 _B  ter t at’s. W at you  e  oing. It d ing k ep._  
  
It seemed like as good an idea as any. At least it would be easier to get a sense of where Vanitas was without the darkness confusing everything. Accordingly, Terra kept walking, not caring when a particularly forceful stream turned him in one direction or another as long as it wasn’t back on his own footsteps.  
  
 _Keep g ing._  
  
 _Do you know where you are yet?_  
  
 _N t yet. I c n’t m ve. Hu ry!_ The last word was unbroken, but so soft that Terra almost missed it anyway: _Please._  
  
He couldn’t stop up all of the holes by walking on them: some, too many, were along the side of the platform, where he couldn’t reach. But he could do enough, scrabbling on his hands and knees to cover more at a time, to clear away most of what obscured his senses.  
  
After far too much time and far too much silence from Vanitas, Terra found him.  
  
Above him, where the darkness crossed and recrossed itself, there was something like a cocoon, wound so tightly that he hadn’t noticed it was more than a knot. But now some of the strands were gone, and where they had been a hollow was revealed. A hollow from which there dangled a single, pale, human hand.  
  
 _There you are!_ He surprised himself with how much relief came out in the words.  
  
 _Where?_  
  
 _You’re tangled up in the darkness._  
  
 _I n ver wou d have g esse , wh t wit  the  ark ess and al ._  
  
Terra ignored him. It was just like Vanitas to keep being sarcastic when Terra was trying to help. _I’ll get you down, but it’s kind of high up, so be careful._  
  
 _Do ‘t drop  e, cl msy._  
  
Now that he had something in particular to work toward, it went faster. Terra traced the streams of darkness that made Vanitas’s prison back to their roots, and where they were within reach from the top of the platform he went to them first, back and forth as the tangle slowly faded away.  
  
He couldn’t get them all, but he didn’t have to: eventually the darkness was too unbalanced to hold Vanitas in place. He tumbled free with the force of the jostling rivers and dropped like a stone toward the platform.  
  
Terra wasn’t sure he had ever moved that fast before. He wasn’t sure that he could move that fast at all in the outside world. Here, he made it in time to catch Vanitas, who didn’t seem able to catch himself, before he could crack his skull on the solid ground.  
  
Vanitas blinked up at him. His eyes were open, but he didn’t move, though he couldn’t like being carried under any circumstances. _I can’t move. Why can’t I move?_  
  
 _I don’t know._ Perhaps it was something to do with the darkness: Terra had taken too much time, and it had done some permanent damage, something that couldn’t be fixed. He didn’t know what that meant, here in Vanitas’s heart, but it couldn’t be good. What if Terra had done more harm than good, acting so recklessly?  
  
 _It feels numb. Anesthesia, or something like it. It’s like I can’t feel anything at all. Did you do this?_  
  
Terra looked at the expanse of the platform, almost completely covered with his darkness, keeping it away from Vanitas – keeping Vanitas, now that he thought of it, cut off from his own heart. _I think so,_ he admitted.  
  
But Vanitas didn’t sound angry, or even hurt. _I like it_ , he said instead.  
  
 _Why?!_ That didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t even move. His heart was the next thing to gone. He shouldn’t like it.  
  
 _It doesn’t hurt._ The words cut Terra to the core. He remembered the pain that had guided him. That had been Vanitas’s pain, the damage to his heart echoing through him and out to Terra. It had hurt Terra just to listen to; how much more must it have hurt Vanitas! And it had been going on for a long time, months, while Terra had paid no attention. None of them had paid attention.  
  
He gathered Vanitas closer, as if he could reach back in time and shield him that way. _I’m sorry,_ he said quietly. The words didn’t mean anything, of course. They weren’t, couldn’t be, enough to change anything. Still, he had to say them.  
  
 _Whatever,_ said Vanitas. _Are we going to get to the point or not?_  
  
Terra nodded. Whatever he could do to end this, he would do. There would be time for apologies later. _It’s your heart. What’s next?_  
  
Vanitas just lay there and blinked for long enough that Terra began to worry, but then he said, _He said you could share your heart with mine._  
  
 _That’s right._ Terra wasn’t sure how that worked, not precisely, but he would give anything to fix this, to heal the horrible gaping holes in Vanitas’s heart. Even now, there were plenty that still spouted loop after loop of darkness, and underneath the violet glaze of his darkness he could feel a force building up that would shatter the barrier given no other outlet.  
  
But instead of giving instructions, Vanitas looked at him blankly and asked, _Why?_  
  
 _Why what? I don’t understand._  
  
 _Why would you do that? I’m not like you. I’m not really the real one. He could live without me. You don’t like me. Your Master doesn’t like me. Why not just get rid of me?_  
  
Terra gaped. Of all the things Vanitas might say, he hadn’t expected that. For a long moment, he couldn’t think of any reply. Then he focused on the one thing he was sure of. _I do like you. Aqua likes you. Ven likes you. And,_ he swallowed everything, the habits of a lifetime, and lifted Vanitas so he could see Terra’s platform below and the shadow sprawled across half of it, _you’re more like me than you think._  
  
Vanitas made a strange sound, like a laugh that couldn’t quite manage it. _Copycat. Your dark secret isn’t a patch on mine, though,_ he said, amused.  
  
 _I guess not._ Terra’s darkness didn’t hurt him, or trap him, or kill him slowly. He supposed that made him lucky. _Let me help._  
  
Vanitas shut his eyes. _Yeah. Okay._  
  
That was all it took, it turned out. Terra felt a sudden lurch and a flash of black against black from behind him. The darkness he had used to paper over the holes in Vanitas’s heart sank into them instead, blocking them, and he could feel it reach out to cover the holes he hadn’t been able to reach.  
  
He thought he fell. He couldn’t be sure. There was too much else to feel. All the darkness that had been swirling around seemed to pour over him and Vanitas, drowning them both. He could feel everything in them: pain and cold and anger and loneliness and secrets, the echoes of a thousand Unversed. It would wash them both away if it could, off the platform into the nothingness beyond, and neither of them would ever find their way back. But his darkness held him, anchored him, and he held Vanitas as the change took hold.  
  
When it stopped, he discovered that Vanitas was holding him, gripping his hand back just as tightly. The holes were gone. The colors weren’t right – they were the colors from Terra’s platform – but what did belong to Vanitas was in no danger of falling apart. Now Terra could see the whole of the platform, and it ached in him.  
  
The glass depicted a boy who looked like Ven but not quite, who had something in the lines of his body that was Vanitas all through: a wariness, perhaps, a constant readiness for attack. That wasn’t the pain. The pain was the boy sketched in glass opposite him, so faint in color that he was barely visible. That boy was Vanitas, unmistakably.  
  
Vanitas himself didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to notice that he was still gripping Terra with all the strength in his fingers, either. All he said was, _I forgot what it was like._  
  
 _What what was like?_ Terra asked absently.  
  
 _Not hurting. Not being…broken._  
  
Terra couldn’t say anything to that but grip his hand tighter yet. No one should forget something so small. No one should ever have to learn it.  
  
Now Terra was the one who felt an ache, just a small one but persistent, from the direction of his platform. _We have to go back,_ he said, setting Vanitas reluctantly on his own feet.  
  
He sounded far too much like a child, sometimes. Times like when he said, _Master Xehanort won’t like it, when the Unversed go away._  
  
 _He won’t hurt you,_ Terra promised. Maybe he had no right to make a promise he might not be able to keep, but he would try, and he hoped that would be enough.  
  
He almost tripped over the edges of the steps more than once, going back. A large part of him didn’t want to go. This place was simple, even easy; everything else was going to be horribly complicated. Sooner or later, he was going to have to think of what he’d done and what it meant.  
  
Later, he decided, when he opened his ordinary, physical eyes at the same time Vanitas did. Vanitas didn’t look the same, somehow, outside of their hearts, but he could see a ghost of the boy he’d held looking back at him as Vanitas felt the difference in his heart.  
  
It had been a long, horrible day, and a series of long, horrible weeks before that, when Vanitas hadn’t been able to feel anything without it escaping him. Vanitas burst into sobs, horrible strained ones at first and then more natural ones as he remembered how to cry. Terra reached out for him, and for once Vanitas came, leaning into his arms as he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, months of fear and anguish all tearing free at once. Terra held him. For a moment he felt like he could hold off anything.  
  
“It’s okay,” he whispered as Aqua and Ven joined them. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”  
  
For the first time in months, he was sure it would be.


	3. (i don't want you to tell me) It's Time to Come Home

Things changed.  
  
He didn’t notice while he was distracted by everything else – he tried not to admit to crying like a child, even to himself – but when he had had enough of being piled on and started wiggling his way out of the heap of Keyblade wielders, Vanitas bumped hard into Ven and realized, suddenly, that he felt nothing. Not quite nothing: he still knew that Ven was there without having to look, but the arm digging into his side felt like someone else’s arm, not his own. He ran, as soon as the Master let them out, and though he got farther and farther away from Ven, the ache didn’t even begin. He could tell where Ven was, but that was all.  
  
It was strange. He wasn’t sure that he liked it. He took his time coming back to them. It was bizarre, not feeling the perpetual tug toward his – toward Ven’s body. It didn’t look like it was his anymore.  
  
He wasn’t sure it was worth it. He’d been able to put up with this body as a temporary measure, but it felt permanent now. The worst part was that it didn’t _feel_ wrong. It felt like his body, like the shape that he belonged in. His intellect was the only thing that ( **wasn’t used to it yet** ) knew any better.  
  
The Master looked at him suspiciously when he came back. “Where were you off to in such a hurry?”  
  
Vanitas shrugged, deliberately vague. “Checking.” He didn’t have to tell the Master anything now. It was too late to take back what had happened: Vanitas was better now, not a danger unless he chose to be. The Master would have to come up with all new reasons to get rid of him, if he wanted to, and that would take time.  
  
“Are you okay?” asked Aqua. “Is everything…?”  
  
“It’s fine,” he said. It was mostly true. Everything was as they had planned it to be, which was the thing that mattered to everyone but Vanitas. What the results of their plan felt like now that it was complete was his business, and he wasn’t sure yet what he thought of it. It was better than dying, he thought, even if it wasn’t what he wanted most.  
  
He yawned, then scowled at himself. He had no business being so tired. He’d done enough sleeping already today for a week, so why did he feel as though he could sleep for another month? There was no need for it, and he had so many things to do, to try, now that he was different. Now that he was free from the restrictions of his injured heart.  
  
He yawned again. This time Terra echoed him. It was ridiculously stupid, the two of them standing in the middle of the fancy hall in the middle of the afternoon and yawning their heads off.  
  
Aqua furrowed her brows at them. She didn’t look tired. That was pretty typical of her, Vanitas thought resentfully. “Guys? Are you sure you’re okay?”  
  
“’m fine,” Terra said through another yawn, “just tired.” Vanitas nodded sleepy agreement. All he wanted was to find somewhere to tuck himself away where no one would bother him and sleep until his thoughts stopped being so fuzzy and hard to catch. That would be good, yes. That would make everything so much easier to deal with.  
  
He had to get to somewhere safe, first, he thought muzzily, somewhere he wouldn’t be found. He had a lot of hiding places prepared in the castle for times like this. He would be fine if he could get to one of them without being caught.  
  
It would have been easier to make his escape if he had been able to walk quickly or in much of a straight line. As it was, Aqua easily got between him and the door. “Where do you think you’re going?”  
  
“Sleep,” Vanitas said, helpfully. Surely that had to be obvious to her. Maybe Terra was fine with the prospect of falling down in the middle of the wide open room, but Vanitas had a little more self-preservation than that. He ducked around Aqua, or tried to: it didn’t work quite right, and she caught him by the arm.  
  
“Master, is this normal?” She was talking over his head. Vanitas hated when people did that. It wasn’t like he was deaf just because he was tired. “Are they going to sleep like Ven did?”  
  
That, Vanitas considered, was actually a question worth answering. He might feel like he could sleep for a week, but that didn’t mean he _wanted_ to. He had had just about all the being watched while he slept that he could stand. He chased the fuzz out of his head to listen to the Master’s reply.  
  
“Not for long enough to be a concern. Ventus slept for so long due to a combination of different forms of injury, most of which are not present. This connection, however, is not normal, and the body takes some time to adjust.”  
  
That sounded okay. The Master was the one who knew, and he would never take risks with his precious student. If he thought it was nothing to worry about, then Vanitas could trust that.  
  
He ducked around Aqua with more success that time and made for the nearest hiding place. He wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, it was closer than his bedroom, where they would look for him. The storeroom was less comfortable, since he hadn’t found any blankets that wouldn’t be missed, but it was good enough. He was asleep almost before the door latched behind him.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Aqua was starting to worry, after all the time Vanitas had been spending asleep, that his condition was still more serious than they’d though, but he and Terra were both in the dining room when she made it downstairs, as if it were a regular day. They both looked none the worse for wear, and Vanitas looked better in a way she couldn’t quite specify.  
  
He was still the same Vanitas, though: Aqua politely pretended not to notice him pocketing a bagel to which he was not, technically, entitled, since breakfast was supposed to stay in the dining room unless somebody was sick or being treated to breakfast in bed. Still, as long as nothing in Vanitas’s room started to rot, she and Terra had agreed to ignore it. He was quite good about getting rid of things before they went bad, and there were worse things he could be doing.  
  
“Good morning,” she mustered enough energy to say, flopping into her chair and stabbing a sausage emphatically with her fork.  
  
“Morning,” Vanitas said around a mouthful of eggs.  
  
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she said automatically.  
  
“Why not?” She was sure he waited until he’d finished talking to swallow on purpose.  
  
“It’s rude,” she replied. To set a good example, she took a bite of sausage and chewed thoroughly before continuing, “Also gross. No one wants to look at your half-chewed eggs.”  
  
Before the discussion could get out of hand, which Vanitas showed every sign of wanting it to do, Master Eraqus intervened by walking in and looking sharply at the three of them. They all became extremely interested in their food, Aqua included. Fighting over table manners was immature, and she should know better.  
  
“Where is Ventus?” he asked.  
  
Vanitas waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the hall. “Over there somewhere, up a floor.” Aqua looked at him quizzically. Had he met up with Ven already this morning? “What? I still know where he _is_. We’re not _that_ separate.”  
  
Master Eraqus looked surprised for a moment, but he accepted the information quickly enough. “Then when you have finished eating, it is your job to find him and bring him to the hall before he misses a lesson.”  
  
“Why should I care if he misses a dumb lesson?” Vanitas said sulkily, his -- relatively -- good mood vanishing in the blink of an eye.  
  
Master Eraqus fixed him with one of the even stares that was worse than a shout. “Because if he does due to your disobedience, then so will you.”  
  
Vanitas was gripping his fork so tightly his knuckles were white, and Aqua wasn’t sure what to think of the expression on his face. He should have been pleased; Aqua was pleased for him. It was obvious how much he had missed being trained. Instead, he was practically glaring. “I’m not having one anyway.”  
  
“Yes, you are. It is my judgment that your unique situation has been adequately resolved. I am satisfied that you no longer inadvertently pose more of a danger than the other students can manage. As such, beginning today you will begin training on the same level as Ventus.”  
  
That woke up Aqua up properly. It was wonderful news: Vanitas would have something to do all day other than find new ways to be rude or watch other people train. That would be bound to make him more pleasant. Besides, if the Master was agreeing – volunteering! – to teach him, it meant that he agreed that Vanitas wasn’t really so bad. She smiled brilliantly across the table.  
  
Vanitas didn’t return her smile, didn’t look at her at all in fact. He kept staring at Master Eraqus like this had to be some kind of joke, and he was waiting for the laughter. He should know better: that would be a cruel thing to do, and even if it hadn’t been, Master Eraqus didn’t joke.  
  
“Training with a Keyblade?” he said warily.  
  
“With a practice blade, to begin with.”  
  
Perversely, that seemed to reassure Vanitas more than it bothered him, though Aqua knew from experience that he was long past the point of being able to summon his Keyblade effortlessly, and she would have expected it to annoy him to be sent back to a practice blade again. But he only tilted one shoulder up a fraction of an inch and said, “You really expect me to believe that it’s just to begin with? Are you going to let me move on when he does?”  
  
“Vanitas!” she exclaimed, shocked.  
  
That was rude, talking to the Master that way, and he had to know it. It was more than rude, it was questioning the Master’s fairness, and as such the nearest thing to unthinkable that there was. Aqua flinched a little inwardly at the thought. He might well have learned it from her, over the last days.  
  
Master Eraqus didn’t lecture him, or take back the offer, just looked at him and said, “We’ll see.”  
  
Aqua flinched a little more, because that meant no. And _that_ meant that the Master didn’t trust Vanitas still. Maybe she was being foolish to trust him, even knowing that he was nothing but darkness inside. She kept thinking of him as no more dangerous than Ven, and that wasn’t true. She would have to be more careful. Vanitas hadn’t hesitated to lie to them all this time, when if he’d told the truth at the start they could have fixed everything months ago. That was the kind of person he was, even if he was something else too. She could just be succumbing to wishful thinking about that other, better person.  
  
She didn’t like having to think this way about someone living with her, someone sitting across from her at the breakfast table. Aqua bit a corner off her toast more fiercely than it deserved. She would wait to make a final decision about how to act, wait until she knew more, wait until Vanitas showed once and for all who he truly was under all the things that had happened to him. She would be reasonable. She wouldn’t let her feelings run away with her.  
  
She looked at Terra for a change, more or less, of topic. “How are you doing?” He didn’t look quite as energetic as he usually did in the morning.  
  
“M’fine,” he mumbled into his fork.  
  
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Vanitas said, snide.  
  
Aqua ignored him. “Are you really? I don’t know. You’re not bouncing around knocking over vases.”  
  
“That only happened once!” Terra protested.  
  
“Why,” she continued, “if I didn’t know better, I might almost think you’d suddenly become… _normal_.”  
  
Terra threw a bagel at her. She caught it deftly and started spreading cream cheese on one half.  
  
“Terra, no throwing food,” said Master Eraqus absently.  
  
“Sorry, Master.”  
  
Aqua chuckled. “What, no ‘Sorry, Aqua’?”  
  
Terra grinned at her. “Sorry I didn’t hit you, Aqua.”  
  
Her rebuttal took the form of biting into her victory bagel with exaggerated delight. This was good. This was normal, and after everything that had just happened, she needed normal. She thought they all did.  
  
“This is disgusting.” Apparently Vanitas disagreed. He put his dirty things in the sink with more clattering than should really be possible. “I’m out of here.”  
  
“Both of you, in the hall in half an hour,” Master Eraqus reminded him as he passed.  
  
“I know, I know.”  
  
Once he’d left, the air was easier somehow. It reminded Aqua of breakfasts before Ven had come, when it had just been the three of them, and everything had been much simpler. She didn’t want to go back to that time, not precisely, but it was nice all the same to sit and eat her bagel without looking at or after anyone.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
It actually took a few tries for Vanitas to pick the door with Ven behind it: that part of the castle had a lot of rooms with strange shapes, and where Ven was didn’t necessarily connect to the door he was closest to. It was strange ( **and strangely not frustrating** – _going soft already_ ) to not be sure. There was for once no pressure inside his heart driving him to be right the first time and get closer as soon as possible.  
  
If it hadn’t been Vanitas looking, Ven might have gone unfound for quite a while. The oddly-shaped rooms weren’t in use, at least as long as Vanitas had been there, and none of them contained anything interesting. Well, there was one that contained one of Vanitas’s caches, because the room had a corner that was completely invisible from its door and enough space to push a couch back there without it becoming noticeable, but there was no way for Ven to know that. He never knew what was going on with Vanitas. It was one of his more tolerable traits. The others had occasional attacks of perspicacity that drove him half mad with wondering when another one was coming on.  
  
The room Ven was in had nothing of interest even to Vanitas. It was perfectly round, right in the middle of all the others as far as Vanitas could figure it, like they were some kind of puzzle wrapped around to confuse anyone trying to get in. Why whoever had built the castle would do that, he didn’t know: there was nothing of value in the round room, so far as he could tell. Indeed, there was very little at all. The only point that might be of interest was the decoration.  
  
There were symbols painted all over the room, floor, walls, and ceiling: strange, large symbols that had to be pictures of some kind, places perhaps, though many of them were very strange places if so; lines connecting them, running from one to the next in no reliable pattern, sometimes curving around a place entirely, or turning into arrows; next to the large symbols and the arrows, smaller, more complicated markings, possibly writing, though Vanitas had never paid enough attention to check.  
  
Ven was sitting in the middle of the room, staring up at the symbols that crisscrossed the ceiling like they held some kind of secret. Maybe they did. Or maybe, Vanitas considered, shaking off the sentimentality, Ven was just staring blankly into space for no reason at all.  
  
He came no farther into the room than he had to. “Asleep again already?”  
  
From the way Ven yelped and fell over in trying to turn around too quickly, he hadn’t even noticed Vanitas come in. As if _Vanitas_ could ever have been lucky enough to fail to notice _him_ , he thought. Then he paused. He hadn’t known where Ven was that morning until he’d deliberately thought about it. Maybe, now, he _could_ be surprised by Ven. If, that was, Ven ever went anywhere without making such a racket that someone would have to be both deaf and dead to miss it.  
  
“Wha – oh! Hi!”  
  
Vanitas rolled his eyes. “I’ll take that as a yes. Are you ever not asleep? Do you sleepwalk your way through life? That would explain a few things.”  
  
Ven didn’t seem to feel nearly as insulted as he ought to. “I’m not the one who spent yesterday falling asleep every time I was awake for five minutes!”  
  
“That wasn’t my –” Vanitas began, but Ven kept talking right over him.  
  
“Anyway, I wasn’t asleep. I was trying to read the map, but the ones on the ceiling are too hard to see and I kept getting lost and having to start over.”  
  
“What map?”  
  
Ven grinned, as though Vanitas not knowing what he was talking about was some brilliant prize. “Yeah! The whole room’s a map, look!” He stood and moved off of the symbol he had been sitting on, which now that Vanitas looked at it was the largest and most elaborate of the lot. It certainly had the most symbols around it, plus a gleaming gold star that – he looked around – he didn’t see anywhere else.  
  
He took a step away from the door despite himself. If he got a little closer, he could read what he now saw for sure were letters, in weird calligraphy but perfectly legible nonetheless with a little care. “Land of…Departure?”  
  
“Yeah!” Ven looked at him as though waiting for a reaction. Vanitas took a certain pleasure in not providing one, though it would have been more satisfying if he had known what it was he was supposed to be reacting to.  
  
“So what?”  
  
“So…where are we?”  
  
Vanitas shrugged. “How should I know?” He thought he could guess, though.  
  
Ven looked like a half-deflated balloon. It was almost amusing. That face had never behaved that way when it had been _his_ face, he was absolutely positive. “We’re in the Land of Departure. How come you’ve been awake here longer than me and you don’t know that?”  
  
“Who cares what it’s called? A prison is a prison.” He didn’t have to wonder how Ven knew. It was clearly one more thing that the students learned in the lessons he hadn’t been allowed to attend, though what the Master thought he would do with the name of the world he was on, he didn’t know nor particularly care. ( _Maybe the rest of the lesson he hadn’t attended would have told him what he could do with a name._ )  
  
When it had been his face, his eyes had never looked so idiotically mournful, either. It probably was extremely piteous to someone who didn’t know what that face felt like from the inside. “It’s not a prison. It’s our home.”  
  
“Your home, maybe,” Vanitas corrected. “Not mine.” He wouldn’t have called it Ven’s home, either. It was the Master’s home: he was the one who controlled its guests and barred its doors, who decided what food was eaten and what clothes were worn. The rest of them just lived there.  
  
Ven was giving him that sad-eyed drooping look again. It was easier and less trouble to pay attention to the map than to deal with him. Vanitas took another step into the room, tracing the lines that spun out from the Land of Departure – and now it was obvious what the star meant, You Are Here in terms so simple he hadn’t thought of them – to what had to be other worlds. There was nothing else it could be. Vexingly, he couldn’t parse the obscure symbols that clustered around the sketches of the worlds themselves. They weren’t words in any script he could recognize.  
  
He suspected that he wasn’t supposed to be in here. If the Master hadn’t wanted him to know where _he_ was, then knowing where everything else was was undoubtedly out of the question. He didn’t care. What the Master didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.  
  
“What were you doing in here, anyway?” he asked Ven. It was as good a way as any to cover up how interested he was in the map. He could come back later, as long as no one thought he would.  
  
“Oh! Uh, I found it a couple days ago when I was exploring, and I wanted –” He looked uncharacteristically serious, so much so that Vanitas was reminded sharply that that had once been _his_ face. “I wanted to see if I could find the world I came from, if I could remember it.”  
  
Vanitas gaped at him. Of all the things that might be worth remembering, why would anyone fixate on that? Ven didn’t know better, of course, but he had still known better than to ( **like** – _liking never entered into it_ ) be unwary of Master Xehanort. This should have been at least as intuitive.  
  
Ven carried on without noticing the thoughts swirling in Vanitas’s head. “I guess I could just ask you now that you’re here and better and so on. What world was it? What was it like? Is it on this map?”  
  
“No,” Vanitas lied sharply. He could see it, that was the worst part, could recognize the image from across the room. There was no other possible way an artist could have sketched it in a few colors and features. He didn’t have to see the name to know.  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” he snapped. “It’s not yours, and you don’t remember it.” _Lucky bastard_ , he thought but did not say.  
  
Of course, leaving it at that would be too easy and not nearly nosy enough. “But it’s where I came from too! Don’t I have a right to know?”  
  
“You don’t _want_ to know!” The words tripped over themselves in their haste. It felt like he was being sick, but with sound instead of emotion. “You get to forget about it, and you’re never going back there, so _leave_ it! Stop trying to let it get its claws in you again!”  
  
He was saying too much, feeling too much. He shut his mouth and waited for the sickness to come. It didn’t. The only thing that came was memory, and as little as he liked remembering that world, he didn’t lose time thinking about it, not now that he was gone so far away that no one ( _except his Master, who knew everything_ ) even knew that he had ever been there. They could send him away, but they couldn’t send him back. Holding onto that, he could stay in the round room in the here and now.  
  
Ven looked like Vanitas had punched him. He almost wished he had. That might have made at least one of them feel better. He sounded like he’d been punched too, when he said, “Did _I_ hate it that much?”  
  
There was nothing he could possibly say to that except far more of the truth than anyone, even someone who used to be him, deserved to know. He was sick and tired of telling people his secrets. This one wasn’t going to matter to anyone, so there was no reason he should have to tell it.  
  
He changed the subject instead to his actual reason for being there. “The Master was looking for you. You have a lesson in – in now, let’s go!” He wasn’t going to be late. If the Master was going to go back on his word, he would have to do it right to their faces. Vanitas wasn’t about to make it easy on him.  
  
Of course, after all those questions, it didn’t occur to Ven to ask why Vanitas cared so much about his punctuality all of a sudden. Vanitas smiled to himself as he led the way out of the twisting passages. It would make an interesting surprise.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
The boys arrived in the hall with five minutes to spare. Eraqus questioned himself: did this please him, or did it not? He had declared his intention of allowing Vanitas to join the training, and he would not recant his declaration without new reason. Nevertheless, he could not deny that a part of him would have welcomed a justification for postponing the task until another day.  
  
They had arrived punctually, however, and so the lesson would begin. There was no point in dwelling upon it. He had done all the thinking necessary the night before. His conclusions were sound, and that was the end of the matter.  
  
Ventus had his practice blade and got it out in good order, but of course Vanitas had no such thing. He slouched in place, staring at Eraqus with that insouciance that fell just barely on the right side of insult. It was unfathomable, how a child managed to fit so much disdain, challenge, and arrogance into a mere expression.  
  
“You’re staying?” Ventus had not been told about the change in lesson plan, as Eraqus had not been able to find him in good time. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he seemed entirely thrilled by the prospect rather than apprehensive. Perhaps his education on that score was still somewhat lacking – or perhaps by virtue of their shared origins he simply did not regard Vanitas as a threat.  
  
“As a practice dummy, apparently. Or do I get to defend myself, Master?”  
  
The tone was clearly calculated to annoy, but Eraqus would not be a teacher if he were not proof against such minor vexations. He produced the standard wooden practice blade he had taken from storage for the purpose and held it out to Vanitas, handle first.  
  
The boy took it in a standard grip, rather than Ventus’s preferred backhand. That was unexpected. Eraqus had anticipated their fighting styles being much the same. It seemed that more had changed in the separation, or at some later point, even than might outwardly appear. The grip itself was solid, but Vanitas, of course, retained the memory of his prior training unprompted. How much training that was, precisely, Eraqus would have to discover for himself.  
  
That might, unfortunately, reduce the amount of time he had to spend on Ventus, but there was no escape for it. Learning the skills of a pupil, however temporary, was a necessary first step. At least Ventus was at the point of being able to warm up without supervision.  
  
“Ventus, begin with the basic sequence drill,” he instructed. Ventus nodded and turned seriously to the task. He was a good student in that regard. “Vanitas, with me.” He raised his Keyblade to the central guard position. “Attempt an overhead strike.”  
  
The blow was quick – and, he noted, more enthusiastically delivered than a drill called for – but sloppy. Moreover, Vanitas’s stance was not adequate to support his attack, he committed too much of his upper body, and as soon as he saw Eraqus’s block succeed, he retreated in poor order and much too far.  
  
That last was the first issue to address, Eraqus deemed. “Stay where you begin until I instruct you to move. This is not a footwork drill. Again.”  
  
The strike that resulted was in no way adequate to the case. Where he had been overenthusiastic, Vanitas was suddenly hesitant: his blade barely tapped Eraqus’s before he was pulling into a guard position – and an inadequate one at that, had Eraqus followed with the most basic riposte from his block position.  
  
“You are anticipating. This is not a sequence; focus only on the strike. Again.”  
  
While Vanitas neither dodged nor blocked after completing the next strike, in the acceptable range of force this time, he tensed as though he expected a heavy riposte to land. Eraqus began to suspect that an explanation was in order if he wanted to move on to the other areas in drastic need of improvement. “I am not going to move to the offensive at this time. When I wish for you to add a counter-block, I will instruct you as such.”  
  
“Yes, Master.” From Vanitas’s tone of voice, he did not believe him. Then again, from his tone of voice he never did.  
  
“Again, and this time return to your initial position.”  
  
The tension, too small to be called a flinch, did not abate with further repetition. Eraqus therefore resolved to leave off addressing it for a time. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that Vanitas was merely nervous, as indeed Eraqus wished him to be. The darkness he represented ought not to be comfortable here.  
  
It was logistically awkward to return to running Ventus through the sequence they had been working with when he was by no means sure whether or not Vanitas knew all the separate elements, but Eraqus resolved to assume that he did unless Vanitas said otherwise. Ventus’s training could not be held back, and certainly not for the sake of Vanitas.  
  
From the first lesson, he was forced to conclude that Vanitas’s training had been extremely different from the plan he preferred to follow himself. The boy knew the theory of all the moves, as expected considering how little time it had taken Ventus to pick them up again, but his basic form was, speaking politely, in need of improvement. Impolitely, it was abysmal. Eraqus spent more time exhorting him to settle his weight and keep his knees loose but not bent than he spent correcting the sequence itself.  
  
“A blow is not struck by the weapon arm alone,” he lectured. It had been a very early lecture for Terra and Aqua, one he had given long before they reached the point of stringing sequences together at all. Ven had had to hear it, and now it seemed that that was no accident of amnesia, for Vanitas decidedly required it as well. “The whole body must support and contribute, or the attack will be weak and the block easily broken.”  
  
Vanitas did not seem to be paying sufficient attention. Eraqus looked forward at repeating the lesson every day until Vanitas eventually agreed to listen to instruction, and questioned once more whether or not he had made the correct decision. A student who did not wish to learn would fail whatever he did, and there was no point in his trying to change that.  
  
It was only the first day, he decided. He would wait before determining whether or not Vanitas would mend his ways and listen properly. That would be only fair.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
“Clear your minds of all irrelevant thought,” the Master admonished. Vanitas waited until his back was turned and made a face. This was stupid. He knew how to do magic already. Well, he really only had the hang of one spell, but the rest had to follow the same pattern. He wasn’t going to get anywhere if he switched suddenly to this other method that didn’t work anything like as well and certainly wouldn’t do him any good in a real fight.  
  
At least he wasn’t the only one who didn’t get it. Ven had his eyes squeezed shut and his tongue poking out of his mouth, looking incredibly foolish, and he was no closer to bringing magic out by this incomprehensible method than Vanitas was.  
  
The older students were doing better, but that was only to be expected. They had never been taught any better method, so they probably thought that this made sense. Aqua was downright showing off, with her handful of tame lightning that was supposed to be too erratic for Vanitas to try yet. He was supposed to be trying fire.  
  
He knew how to call fire! It wasn’t really hard, not for combat-ready spells. The only difficult part was holding it for long enough with nothing to burn. He could be practicing that part right now if it weren’t for the Master’s insistence on going by slow, clumsy methods that probably only worked for people who didn’t have any thoughts in their minds to clear. That didn’t explain why Ven was having trouble, but he was half Vanitas after all.  
  
As if in response to the thought, sparks gathered around Ven’s outstretched hand. His eyes flew open, and they vanished, but the Master had seen.  
  
“A good beginning! Remember, overthinking will only interfere. Do not allow your thoughts to wander from the goal, even when it seems within reach.”  
  
Ven nodded, still smiling like the Master’s praise was the best thing in the world ( _the way he had smiled for_ – **that was over now, over and done and Masters couldn’t be allowed to matter, he knew that now** ) and went back to focusing. The sparks showed up again almost straight away.  
  
This could not be allowed to stand. Vanitas was not going to lag behind the rest. He was better than that, far better. Conjuring fire was the one thing he had been able to practice all this time. He could be the best of them, if the Master would just let him use what worked.  
  
The Master didn’t have to know. As long as Vanitas got results, he would just assume that he’d been obeying the stupid instructions. Then he could move on to learning how to apply the method to other spells, and only when he knew them all would he admit that he’d been doing it his own way, the right way, the way he’d ( _learned from his real Master_ ) used so much before.  
  
When the Master’s back was turned to deal with Terra and Aqua, who had managed to bounce their spells off each other in a way neither of them, undoubtedly, had intended, Vanitas looked at Ven: still focusing, eyes shut again. Since the explosion hadn’t startled him out of his fugue, he was unlikely to notice anything less than a physical blow. There would be no threat of discovery there. He held out his hand, palm up and fingertips curled, as the Master had instructed him to do, the sadist. Then he concentrated on his frustration, distilled it, and poured it down his arm to pool in his fingertips.  
  
It wasn’t a very hot flame – he wasn’t going to make this harder on himself than he had to – but it hurt plenty all the same as the fire took root on his fingers and burned merrily away. At least the pain made another fine ingredient for the fire, and one he was unlikely to run out of.  
  
He could hold it, he told himself. Soon enough the Master would turn around and see how he had succeeded. He just had to hold it until then and he could let go and ask to try ice instead. That would be so much easier to deal with, if he could just hold on now without showing weakness. He was aware that he was biting down on his lower lip to keep silent, but it didn’t register as pain. How could it, when his fingers were burning before his eyes, blisters rising already on the skin? He had to keep the fire burning. That was the only thing that mattered. The others hadn’t made a sound. He wasn’t the weak one. He wasn’t going to break down. He could hold it.  
  
“Vanitas!”  
  
Ice crystallized into being over his little fire, putting it out and breaking his concentration. Before he could find it again, the Master had hold of his burned and burning hand – it had been a poor choice on his part, using the right; if he couldn’t find a potion somewhere training would be miserable until the blisters healed – and was uncurling the fingers from where they felt permanently curved into claws.  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
Something was wrong, but he tried to go on as though all was going as he had planned. “I did it, Master.” He ought to sound happier about it, but he couldn’t feel happy enough to pretend. He had had to burn his fingers to prove something that he should never have had to prove, because the Master didn’t teach properly. Now he was going to have to take care of that hand unless the Master thought he had succeeded well enough to have earned healing. He wasn’t exactly filled with delight at the prospect.  
  
The Master didn’t seem thrilled either: he was shaking his head, looking down at Vanitas’s hand as though the secret of the magic were hiding there. If it was, it clearly wasn’t a secret he liked. “This is not success.” That didn’t hurt. It didn’t. He didn’t care what the Master thought, not really. It was a disappointment, that his ruse had failed, but there was no call to go feeling hurt about it. “Tell me the truth: what did you do that caused this to happen?”  
  
“I called the flame, like you told me to,” Vanitas said. He doubted it was very convincing. “I guess I held it a little too long.” That was the Master’s own fault for telling Vanitas to call the flame on his own hand. What else had he expected? Fire burned.  
  
“This is not holding the spell ‘a little too long’. This is casting the spell in complete error. I can see that you failed to balance your mind, but why did you not release the spell before you injured yourself?”  
  
“ _You_ told me to hold it as long as I could when I succeeded. Master.” He had done just what he he had been told, even if he had done it in his own way. It might not have been long enough, but the Master had not said when he could let go, and he hadn’t been about to drop the spell before the Master saw. That was the entire point of the exercise. “I’m not weak enough to drop a spell because of a little pain.”  
  
For the first time, he thought that the Master might be at a loss. It was only a passing instant, for soon enough he thundered, “There was not supposed to be _any_ pain! Did you pay attention to a single word of your instruction before you undertook to burn your own hand off?”  
  
Everyone was staring at him, but Vanitas wasn’t going to fold up under their shock, no matter how much he wanted to or how little he understood it. “You asked for fire on my hand. Fire burns.” Of all the things to get him in trouble, it was bizarre for it to be this, when he wasn’t even trying. So much for getting healed. He should have snuck some potions ages ago. Now if one went missing it would be obvious that it was him.  
  
The Master’s eyes went very narrow and sharp. “You did not follow my instructions at all. Who taught you this?”  
  
That was quite possibly the stupidest question with the most obvious answer that Vanitas had been asked today. “Who do you –” he began, but the Master was clearly too angry to accept flippancy. “…Master Xehanort,” he said grudgingly. “And it _works_.”  
  
The Master meaningfully eyed the blisters rising on Vanitas’s hand. “Does it?”  
  
He tried to tug his hand away, but the Master refused to relinquish it. “He never told me to set it on my _hand_.” There was no point to setting fire on something not meant to be burnt. That was how fire worked.  
  
“And it did not occur to you at any point that my telling you to call the fire to your hand might indicate that this process might be different?”  
  
He clearly had no interest in hearing the answer, which was that Vanitas hadn’t thought anything of the kind, and why should he have, so Vanitas kept his mouth shut.  
  
The Master sighed, though the anger and tension in his body didn’t relax. Vanitas stayed put. If he was lucky, the Master would decide that the burn was enough punishment for being stupid. But all he said, in the end, was, “As you would have learned had you been paying attention, magic should pass through you when you cast it but have no contact with you unless you will it so. This is why it is so critical to act from a position of detachment in the beginning. If a spell begins to injure you, you are to cease _at once_ and seek an explanation. Do you understand?”  
  
“Yes, Master,” Vanitas lied.  
  
“Very well. I think that that is enough fire for you for one day. Instead, practice clearing your mind and heart of invasive feeling, without proceeding further into the magical process.”  
  
“Yes, Master.” That meant sitting and being bored for hours, but it was better than burning himself again, particularly if the Master wasn’t going to approve of that either. How he was supposed to focus around the throbbing in his hand, he didn’t know, but if he was going to be casting spells with this method in the middle of a fight, he would have to learn to cast through the pain eventually. It looked like his reward for his hard work was that he got to skip a couple of lessons. Lucky him.  
  
But the Master passed a hand over Vanitas’s palm, and with a sparkle that was felt more than seen, the burn healed as though it had never been.  
  
“Thank you, Master,” he said automatically. It was the most important kind of manners to thank a Master for being indulgent enough to heal him from his own mistakes after a failure. What a Master did could always be undone.  
  
“See that you do not do it again.” With that, the Master went back to his students, forcing them for their part to stop staring at Vanitas.  
  
He still felt their eyes skipping over to him all the rest of the lesson, indeed all the rest of the day, as he sat and tried without much interest or hope of success to wipe his feelings away. The stares itched, making success even more elusive as he got exasperated with the lot of them. He wasn’t sure how to do it right. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. He had had quite enough of his feelings draining away. That was supposed to be over now.  
  
Still, the Master had given an order rather than punishing him for real, so he tried anyway.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Ven couldn’t concentrate for the remainder of the magic lesson, and he was glad when it finally ended. It was just impossible to clear the thoughts from his mind the way he was supposed to, after what had just happened. It was too unnerving, watching Vanitas sit there with his eyes shut as though he hadn’t just burned himself on purpose, as though once the burn was healed it didn’t matter at all.  
  
When the lesson was over, Vanitas left in a hurry. Ven was supposed to do likewise: he had work to do, and it was his day to clean his room as well. But he didn’t feel like going inside. It was too close in there for him, when he felt so confused and jumbled up. He stayed in the courtyard instead, perching on a rampart and letting his thoughts chase themselves around and around his head.  
  
Before he could come to any conclusion, not that he had really expected to, Terra and Aqua sat down on either side of him. They didn’t say anything, but just having them there made him feel safer. That was a stupid thing to feel: he was safe here whether they were right with him or not. They couldn’t make him any safer than he already was. He knew that. But somehow he didn’t feel it. If something happened, they would be there. Something had happened, and they were there. He hadn’t had to ask them. They just knew.  
  
“What _happened_?” he asked. He didn’t have to be any more specific than that. They knew what he was talking about.  
  
Aqua looked so sad it hurt him to see, and he felt a momentary flash of anger at Vanitas for making her look that way. “I’m not sure it’s our place to explain.”  
  
“It is! It’s – he’s me, so I deserve to know. How come you know and I don’t?” Ven kicked at the stonework before saying what was really on his mind. “Why would anyone do that to themselves for no reason?”  
  
“I told you before, he had a bad time,” Terra said. “It changed the way he thought about some things.”  
  
“But you never told me he would _burn_ himself!”  
  
He’d noticed the light with part of his mind, even with his eyes closed, but he’d thought it was just the spell working the way it was supposed to until Master Eraqus had shouted, and he’d opened his eyes to see Vanitas’s fingers on fire.  
  
The worst part was the look on his face that Ven had seen before the Blizzard spell had quenched the flames. He hadn’t been shouting or moving or trying to put out the fire. He’d just been looking at his hand with total and fierce concentration. It wasn’t that it hadn’t hurt; it was that he’d decided there was something more important than the pain. He’d accepted it as the cost of doing what he wanted. That was the look that Ven couldn’t get out of his head.  
  
“I didn’t know!” Terra shouted. Ven ducked his head down further. He didn’t want to be yelled at for this. But Terra went on more quietly, “I didn’t know how bad it was, Ven.”  
  
“No one did,” Aqua said. “Even after…I thought he was just scared, not…”  
  
“He wasn’t scared,” said Ven, thinking of Vanitas’s face, fixed and pale but completely focused. “Not at all.”  
  
Aqua scooted a little closer to him. She said, in her most lecturing voice that only shook a little, “Before he came here, he had a lot of trouble he doesn’t like to talk about, but the important thing is that he doesn’t really trust people not to hurt him. So try not to bother him too much, okay? If he doesn’t want you around, don’t follow him.”  
  
Ven kicked the stonework again. That was just what he’d already been told, not an explanation for what had just happened. “I know that. But – why did he do _that_? That wasn’t what the Master told him to do! It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“Well, he said he already learned how to cast a fire spell that way. Maybe he thought the Master would be pleased.” Aqua didn’t sound nearly as calm as the words suggested. Ven didn’t blame her, but the tremor in her voice made the world shaky in a way it had almost ceased to be.  
  
“The Master wouldn’t be pleased by him setting himself on fire!” Would he? The thought made everything he thought he knew threaten to start shaking again. The Master hadn’t been pleased, though. He’d been angry. Ven could hold onto that.  
  
Terra shook his head. “That’s true. But Vanitas didn’t know that, it looks like.”  
  
That didn’t make any kind of sense. Maybe before, when Vanitas hadn’t been a student, he could have not known what the Master was like. It even made sense for Vanitas to not know while so much had been happening, all the events that Ven didn’t have the energy to think about all at once. But now Master Eraqus was Vanitas’s teacher for real, he wouldn’t ever hurt him. Ven was aware he didn’t know much for sure, but he knew that. The Master just wanted to take care of everyone and keep them safe. That was what he did. It didn’t make _sense_ for him to be otherwise. “But, the _Master_ would never…”  
  
“No, he wouldn’t, never. But, Ven…it’s hard to explain.”  
  
“It was Master Xehanort,” Aqua said softly, barely over a murmur. “He taught Vanitas, before he came here. And I guess he was a worse teacher than we thought.” She touched her side with absent fingers, just where Ven knew that there was a new scar. “He wouldn’t care if someone got hurt.”  
  
That finally made sense. Master Xehanort had hurt Aqua trying to get to Vanitas. Master Xehanort, Ven forced himself to remember no matter how much he hated thinking about it, had cut Ven and Vanitas apart to begin with, not by accident but on purpose. Master Xehanort might do anything, if he’d done that. But still, it confused him. For all the sense it made in one way, it made no sense at all in others. “But how could anyone do something like that to anyone, let alone to his student?”  
  
At that they both shook their heads. “I don’t know,” Aqua said.  
  
“The darkness,” said Terra. “When it gets into people’s hearts, when they give in to it, they can do…horrible things, and not care. Hurt people just to hurt them, because they like it. And then the darkness spreads. It’s not something you can understand, and you don’t want to.”  
  
Ven thought of the day before, in the map room he wasn’t supposed to have found. Vanitas had said the same thing then, when Ven had asked about where they had come from. “It wasn’t just Master Xehanort, was it?” he said.  
  
“What makes you say that, Ven?” Aqua asked, but she didn’t deny it.  
  
“I asked him what world he was – we were – from, and he said…he said I was lucky not to remember, and I shouldn’t ask.”  
  
“Oh, _Ven_ …” Terra ruffled his hair. It was oddly comforting.  
  
Thus reassured, Ven asked the question he had been trying not to think about for days. “So does that mean that everything that happened to Vanitas, everything that made him so strange and frightening sometimes, all of that…happened to me?”  
  
Terra didn’t say anything, but Aqua, who always explained things, looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Not everything, but it didn’t all happen in the week you were separate. But you’re a new person now. You don’t have to be worried about anything like that happening anymore.”  
  
Ven stopped kicking the stonework and folded his legs up in front of him. His knees felt like a barrier to hide behind. He wished for a real barrier for a moment, like Aqua’s spell, or like the castle walls but just big enough for him. It was bad enough, thinking of Master Xehanort being like that, but the idea that there were other people out in the worlds, and he didn’t know how many, who would do things just as bad for no reason at all, was terrifying.  
  
He didn’t know how to pick those people out of everyone else. And without his memories, he didn’t even know who any of them were, if he’d ever met any before. It was nice that he was safe here – if he was safe here; Master Xehanort had been able to just walk in and try to destroy them with lies – but there were so many people on so many worlds, and they weren’t safe.  
  
“When I’m a Keyblade Master, I’ll make everyone safe,” he thought aloud.  
  
Terra and Aqua smiled, though it wasn’t much like their real smiles. “That’s a good plan, Ven,” said Terra, reaching over to ruffle his hair again. “I’ll help.”  
  
“So will I,” said Aqua. “All of us, we’ll make the worlds safe for everyone.”  
  


* * *

 

  
  
The knock on his door didn’t startle Vanitas the way it once had. Maybe he was getting used to people knocking instead of just barging in. More likely he was too tired to be startled by anything. He had thought he had been keeping himself in shape well enough, the whole time he hadn’t been supposed to do anything at all. Now, after a week of getting to train again, it was obvious that running hadn’t been good enough. Master Eraqus’s training exercises didn’t hurt anything like the way Master Xehanort’s did, but they were still exhausting enough that he couldn’t really call them soft. Soft would imply that there were muscles in his body that didn’t ache.  
  
He rolled over so that he might loosely be described as facing the door from his position on the rug. It was a very soft rug, and after the morning’s activity he thought he deserved the indulgence of a little laziness. The whole idea of going anywhere, even crawling under the bedframe to his bed, did not appeal in the least.  
  
“What is it?” His voice had all the snap of a wet twig. He should work on that, he thought vaguely. It wasn’t a good idea to be obvious about being tired and vulnerable. At the moment he didn’t care particularly. There wasn’t anyone in the castle except the Master who wasn’t just as tired – at least he hoped there wasn’t. The concept was offensive to him.  
  
“We’re making cookies.” It was Aqua. Of course it was. She was by far the most likely person to bother him. Vanitas had yet to make a consistent determination of whether or not he resented this. Right at the moment, he definitely did. He had been pleasantly half-asleep, and now he would have to start drifting off all over again, thanks to her obsession with pestering him over trivialities.  
  
“How nice for you,” he grumbled.  
  
She didn’t take the hint. “Do you want to come help? It’s fun.”  
  
Vanitas gave serious consideration to the pros and cons of such an activity. On the one hand, it would mean getting up off the rug and going down stairs, plus going back up those same stairs when it was over. Also it would mean chatting with them, or being chatted around, at any rate. On the other hand, cookies.  
  
In the end, the cookies weighed heavily in the balance. He levered himself laboriously up off the rug. “Coming.”  
  
As predicted, there was chatting being perpetrated in the kitchen by the time he got there. Terra had some kind of book in one hand, and he was laughing and holding it high as Ven tried fruitlessly to grab it.  
  
“No jumping in the kitchen,” said Aqua, though she didn’t show any signs of actually doing anything about it. “You’ll break something.”  
  
“Aqua! Make him let me see!”  
  
“I need the list!” Terra objected.  
  
Now Vanitas was curious. He’d never seen cookies made before, and the cookbook, for that was what it had to be, would tell him how. That was intriguing. More to the point, Terra didn’t want anyone else to have it. He could absolutely beat Ven at stealing the cookbook.  
  
If he placed his foot on one of the cupboard handles, he could scramble up on the counter before Aqua noticed what he was up to. From there, it was just a few steps to where Terra was holding the book back over his head. Terra’s grip wasn’t very solid: the cookbook was in Vanitas’s hands with no more than a light tug.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
If he felt like being charitable, Vanitas would say that they were as slow on the uptake as they were because they were worn out from training. He didn’t feel like anything of the kind. What he did feel like was smirking and holding the book over his head, where not even Terra could reach.  
  
“Aqua said no jumping!” Ven objected.  
  
“I didn’t jump; I climbed. It may surprise you to know that there’s a difference.” To underline his victory, Vanitas stuck his tongue out.  
  
Terra did not seem particularly impressed. “Vanitas, get off the counter. Your shoes are filthy, and we cook there.”  
  
That didn’t matter to Vanitas. The counter could be cleaned. Besides, what did a little dirt matter? It wasn’t like he’d stepped in anything nasty recently. “Make me,” he said.  
  
Perhaps that was an unwise choice of words; the next thing Vanitas knew, Terra had grabbed him around the knees and lifted him bodily off the countertop. Vanitas flailed, trying to get his balance with only thin air to stand on. Still, he kept his hands on the book, even though holding it tightly to him forced him to overbalance and slide down Terra’s shoulder.  
  
Terra dropped him unceremoniously on his feet again. Vanitas clutched the book to his chest. “You,” he pronounced ceremoniously, “are an asshole.”  
  
“Language,” said Aqua.  
  
Vanitas stuck his tongue out at her too for good measure. “Well, he is,” he said. “Also, it’s my book now, so there.”  
  
Terra looked a little wild around the eyes. Vanitas awarded himself an additional point. He wasn’t keeping score except when he had nothing else to think about, but a victory was a victory, and frazzling Terra, who had persisted in being oppressively good-natured and forgiving all week, was definitely something to record. He glared at Vanitas, but Vanitas had been glared at by experts in the art, not to mention people who had a real threat to back it up, and he glared right back. Eventually, as he always did, Terra gave in. Throwing his hands in the air, he said, “Fine! If you clean the counters off where you stood on them, you can read the recipe.”  
  
That didn’t seem like much of a prize, but Ven was pouting, so it was good enough.  
  
A sponge bounced off the side of his head, followed swiftly by a dishcloth, which didn’t bounce so much as drift to hang gently off his hair. Aqua looked at least mildly amused, but she pointed at the countertop sternly. “Feet don’t go on the kitchen counters, Vanitas. Not even if they’re clean feet.”  
  
He swiped desultorily at the nearest piece of countertop with one hand while flipping through the book with the other. “Which recipe? Or do I get to pick, since it’s my book now?”  
  
“We’re making chocolate chip cookies. It’s on the page where the ribbon is,” said Aqua, because she had no sense of humor whatsoever and liked bossing him around. If the idea of chocolate chip cookies hadn’t been so appetizing, Vanitas would have objected. Instead, he turned obediently to the page that was already marked.  
  
“This doesn’t look so hard,” he said, looking at the list of steps. There didn’t seem to be a lot of things to do, not enough to need four people.  
  
“Let me see!”  Ven tried to lean over to read the recipe upside down.  
  
Vanitas snatched the book away. “You can hear it when I read it, and not before.”  
  
“Start with the ingredients list,” Aqua said, already opening a cupboard.  
  
Since Terra had several tins in his hands already, Vanitas wasn’t sure what the point of telling them was. “It looks like you already know it, so why bother?”  
  
Aqua’s voice echoed oddly out of the cupboard. “I remember some of it, but not everything, and not how much. Besides, Ven’s never done this before. Read it? Please?”  
  
The fact that Ven didn’t know what was on the list seemed like an excellent reason not to tell him, but that was clearly not going to persuade anybody but himself, so Vanitas began reading off the list. “Two and a quarter cee of flour, one tisp baking soda…”  
  
“What’s a cee? And a tisp?”  
  
“Cup and teaspoon,” said Terra. “Here.” He handed Ven a collection of scoops in different sizes and shapes. “They’re all labeled. Can you get out the ones we’ll need?”  
  
“Okay!” Ven sounded far too enthusiastic for someone relegated to what was clearly make-work.  
  
Vanitas kept reading, speeding up his words until he was talking just a little faster than Ven could keep up. “One tisp salt, one cee softened salted butter – there are different kinds of butter?”  
  
“I’m not sure why, but there are,” said Aqua. “I think this is the right kind. It probably doesn’t matter much, anyway.” She looked at the stick of butter in her hand. “It takes a while to soften usually, but I think I can speed it up a bit.”  
  
The sparks gathering around her hand were not in the least reassuring. Vanitas didn’t do anything so obvious as back away, but he stopped reading off ingredients to watch in case something exploded. Unfortunately (or, considering how close he was to Aqua, fortunately), all the butter did was sit there and start to melt.  
  
“…Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” admitted Aqua.  
  
“Gosh, you think so?” It looked unpleasantly squashy to hold. He was glad he wasn’t the one holding it.  
  
Terra, of course, had to spoil all the fun by producing a large bowl, into which Aqua dumped the butter – or most of it, anyway. The palm of her hand came away rather slimy looking with melted butter. Vanitas snickered. “Do you actually know what you’re doing at all?” he asked.  
  
Aqua glared at him as she cleaned her hand off, but then she laughed. Apparently she was less obsessive about knowing everything when it came to cooking than where her magic was concerned. “It was worth a try! And it’s still better than waiting for the butter to soften on its own. You’re supposed to set it out in advance, but,” she shrugged, “this was kind of spur of the moment.”  
  
“You mean _you_ wanted cookies on the spur of the moment,” said Terra. She didn’t deny it.  
  
It was strange. He liked cookies, as everyone he’d ever met did. They were also small, easy to palm without anyone noticing, and the kind of thing adults who thought they were being kind gave to boys who hung around and didn’t cause trouble. For cookies, there was a lot of trouble he would not cause. So he’d had enough cookies to know how much he liked them. But he had never been able to go and get one on a whim, let alone a whole batch.  
  
They probably hadn’t even asked the Master for permission to use his supplies whim. They just took it for granted that they could have cookies if they wanted them. He wondered if they would all be in trouble later. He considered caring, but whatever happened, it hadn’t been his idea. He had been peaceably minding his own business in his own room. He hadn’t known they weren’t supposed to. Aqua hadn’t told him when she’d asked him to come down and join them.  
  
Aqua had asked him. That was an oddly pleasant thought.  
  
Ven’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Read the rest of the ingredients!”  
  
“What if I don’t want to?” He resented being interrupted in his thoughts, and by Ven of all people. Vanitas having all the parts of the heart that could hold onto a train of thought for more than five seconds didn’t give Ven the right to distract him any time he pleased.  
  
“If you don’t want to, then I get to read!” Ven bounced on his heels and reached for the book.  
  
Vanitas snatched it away. It was his book now, and not Ven’s. That was the end of any possible argument. “What if I don’t want you to? What if I don’t want _anyone_ to? What if this is dumb, and you’re dumb?”  
  
For a moment, he thought Aqua or Terra – or both – might be about to shout at him and chase him out of the kitchen. Before he could do more than brace himself to flee, cookbook still firmly in hand, they exchanged one of their infuriating looks that seemed to be much more eloquent to them than to anyone else. Aqua said, “I remember most of the recipe, I think. We can do it from memory.”  
  
“It can’t be that hard,” said Terra, getting down another tin.  
  
This seemed like a terrible idea. Vanitas was quite sure that they didn’t remember the recipe at all. They were going to do it wrong and waste all the ingredients, and then he would have gotten up and gone to all this trouble without even getting any cookies out of it.  
  
It looked like they won this time. “Three-quarters cee white sugar, three-quarters cee brown sugar, one tisp vanilla, two eggs, twelve oz chocolate chips.”  
  
“Ounces,” Aqua said absently.  
  
“I know that.” He wasn’t stupid.  
  
“I didn’t know that,” said Ven.  
  
“You’re stupid.”  
  
Ven didn’t even give him a hurt look. Vanitas was going to have to think up some new, better insults. “We have the same brain!”  
  
“How do you know? Maybe I just got all the smarts, while you got…Hmm, what _did_ you get?” There wasn’t much Ven had that Vanitas didn’t ( _except his body_ – **he had a new one, a better one, a tougher one** ).  
  
“The good looks?”  
  
“The short attention span.”  
  
“Okay,” said Terra while Ven pouted in a way that meant he wasn’t actually hurt at all. That face had never made nearly so many strange shapes when it had belonged to Vanitas. “So what goes in the small bowl?”  
  
Ven was practically dancing in place while he watched Terra measure ingredients – all the dry, boring ones, and what was baking soda, anyway? – into a bowl. When it was handed to him to stir, his first overenthusiastic swirl sent a dusting of flour all over his face. Vanitas laughed at him and started reading out the ingredients for the large bowl.  
  
Two bowls later, Ven wasn’t nearly so enthusiastic. “Can someone else take a turn?” he asked. “My arms are tired.”  
  
“ _I’m_ reading the recipe,” said Vanitas, smug.  
  
“And cleaning the countertop,” Aqua said, looking meaningfully at the discarded dishcloth. Vanitas picked it up and gave the surface another couple of desultory swipes to appease her. He couldn’t see any dirt, anyway, and he doubted she could either.  
  
Terra took the bowl out of Ven’s hands, which seemed only right and proper to Vanitas, since Terra had more arm muscles than everyone else combined. “Think of it as a training exercise,” he said. Vanitas groaned in disgust. He didn’t want to think of any more things as training exercises than he absolutely had to. He made a great show of focusing his attention on the book.  
  
“I think we’re supposed to be doing something with the oven,” he pointed out. “How does it work?” He prodded said appliance doubtfully.  
  
Aqua nudged him away from it, of course. Not particularly sorry to be nudged, he watched her fiddle with the dials. “What temperature does it want?” she asked.  
  
“It says three hundred seventy-five.”  
  
“Okay…there!” There didn’t seem to be any immediate effect, but Aqua said, “Be careful with the oven. It gets hot, and you could burn yourself.”  
  
Vanitas rolled his eyes. “ ‘The oven gets hot’, you tell me. I’m not _five_. I know what an oven is.” No matter what she said, it didn’t look all that difficult to handle, as long as he didn’t do anything obviously stupid like stick his hand in and start poking around. It looked like it all went by dials anyway, and they were labeled. It wouldn’t be so hard to make the oven do what he wanted.  
  
Right now he wanted it to hurry up and heat so that the cookies could bake. There wasn’t really enough for four people to do. In fact, it looked to him like he could have done it all himself. Everything was written down in the cookbook, and there weren’t nearly enough steps to justify the way everyone else was carrying on.  
  
He flipped through the cookbook while the cookies were in the oven. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do: Aqua and Ven were putting the next tray together, and there was nothing more that needed doing, according to the recipe. Some of the other recipes were a lot more complicated, involving ingredients he’d never even heard of. What was ‘cardamom’? And, more importantly, did they have any? Perhaps it was one of those ingredients like baking soda that nobody mentioned because it wasn’t very interesting. He’d tasted the baking soda when no one had been looking and immediately regretted it. Poking around in the kitchen, he discovered that they did not, in fact, have cardamom, whatever it was, but they did have a selection of other ingredients on various lists.  
  
Vanitas and Ven argued over whether the cookies were really done: Vanitas thought they were perfect, but Ven wanted them cooked a little more. Naturally, Aqua and Terra came in on Ven’s side.  
  
“Just another minute, to be safe,” said Terra.  
  
“What’s to be safe from? They’re _cookies_. They’re not dangerous.”  
  
“If they’re not cooked all the way through, they could make you sick.”  
  
He scoffed. The cookies were definitely cooked through, just not burned – not that they would make him sick even if they weren’t. That didn’t make any sense. They weren’t like meat. Besides, Ven was scraping the leftover dough, down to the last molecule, out of the big mixing bowl, and no one had told him not to. Vanitas scraped the last visible bit off the mixing spoon. There didn’t seem to be much point to baking them at all, when the dough tasted so good already.  
  
On the other hand, slightly too crispy around the edges or not, cookies were more portable than dough. Vanitas slipped some in his pockets for later along with the one he took to eat right away. If he nibbled the dark brown bits off, what remained was almost perfect.  
  
“Save some for the Master!” said Aqua. “And don’t eat too many, or you’ll spoil your appetite for dinner.” Since she said this while balancing a small tower of cookies on her palm, Vanitas felt free to ignore her.  
  
It didn’t seem like the Master kept very good track of his supplies. Perhaps, if Vanitas was careful and cleaned up everything when he was done, he could make cookies again, just for him, and no one would ever have to know.  
  


* * *

 

 

  
“You must be prepared for your future duties as a Keyblade Master,” said Master Eraqus. “Accordingly, it is of vital importance that you be able to identify on your travels both manifestations of light, which require your protection, and manifestations of darkness, which you must oppose.”  
  
Terra nodded. Next to him, Aqua did likewise. They knew this much already and perhaps shouldn’t have been here, but Master Eraqus had decided that they could use a reminder while he was teaching Ven and Vanitas. This wasn’t the kind of lesson that they could afford to forget.  
  
“The worlds contain a certain quantity of darkness by nature, unfortunately, even in this realm of light. This is only to be expected. However, it will be your task to determine when that quantity exceeds the necessary and eliminate it when it does.”  
  
“But if it’s supposed to be there, how can you tell when it’s too much?” Ven asked.  
  
Vanitas answered before the Master did. “Heartless, obviously.”  
  
The Master inclined his head in Vanitas’s direction. “Heartless are indeed one sign of darkness beginning to grow out of control. While they may appear without any particular cause in any world, even this one, in which case they can be quickly eliminated, it is also possible for a sudden influx of Heartless to be no more than a symptom of something more insidious.”  
  
“So they’re not where the darkness comes from?”  
  
“They are not. The ultimate origin of Heartless is obscure, but it is known that they come from and are called by darkness, not the reverse. When a group of Heartless attacks a world, they are driven to consume the hearts of others, increasing the darkness that produces them, but there always existed a seed of darkness to begin the attack.  
  
“For this reason, darkness must be fought wherever it is found, whether or not it appears to present any immediate danger. If it is allowed to grow unchecked, whether in a world or in an individual, it will spread and begin to bring about pernicious consequences.”  
  
Though no one was even looking at him, Terra felt as though he was being stared at. The Master’s words always had that effect: he felt abruptly conscious of the flaws he tried most of the time to forget about entirely. It was lazy and worse to let himself forget, or pretend to forget. He was putting everyone in danger. If he left his darkness alone, it would hurt them one day.  
  
He had to try harder, work more on driving the darkness out. He’d been letting it go recently, with everything else that had been going on. That had to stop. He could beat this, once and for all, and then it would go away. Everything would be better, if he could get strong enough to banish the darkness.  
  
Master Eraqus had gone on while Terra had been lost in guilty thought. He was saying, “Heartless that occur naturally seldom appear in very large groups. If you encounter a large number within a limited area, then two likely situations present themselves: either you have arrived in the middle or later stage of an attack, where the initial Heartless have already expanded their numbers; or there is a single intelligence guiding and controlling the Heartless to some purpose.”  
  
Ven asked, “But I thought the Heartless didn’t think. They’re just monsters, aren’t they?”  
  
“It is true that the Heartless move by pure instinct, but as they grow more powerful, their senses become sharper. They are therefore better able to locate the source of the most powerful light and move to consume it. A particularly large and powerful Heartless may therefore seem to be leading the rest, as it moves toward the heart of the world and the rest follow, devouring all lesser hearts in their path according to the acuity of their senses.  
  
“Moreover, the Heartless have been known to obey, in the short term, orders from a person whose darkness is particularly powerful. Such people are also likely to be the summoners of the Heartless, unwittingly, while their dark hearts are still their own. Eventually, however, they will fall to it, and what remains will become nothing more than the rest of the Heartless.”  
  
“What if they know what they’re doing?” Vanitas hadn’t spoken for some time; Terra had almost forgotten that he was there. He didn’t look happy, though he hardly ever did, especially in a lesson. Still, this unhappiness struck Terra as more immediate than usual. He seemed on the verge of jumping out of his seat, either to run away or to spring on something like a cat on a mouse.  
  
The Master didn’t seem to mind the interruption. “A person could in theory put themself close enough to the darkness to control the Heartless deliberately, but proximity to darkness feeds on and enhances internal darkness. The person in question might continue to command Heartless for some time, unaware of the shadow slowly consuming their heart, but sooner or later it would overpower them. The darkness is not a toy to be played with,” he added, looking at Vanitas sternly. “It is not a tractable tool, as some have imagined to their ultimate cost. It possesses a desire and will of its own that will, in time, overwhelm any merely mortal will that seeks to control it.”  
  
Vanitas ducked his head in something that might have been a nod of acknowledgment and obedience. He didn’t interrupt again for the rest of the lesson.  
  
Terra left the room with a resolution to work harder to get rid of his darkness. As long as he was still in danger of giving into it, he would never deserve to be a Keyblade Master. He had to be strong enough to fight the darkness without letting it touch him.  
  
Vanitas was the last to leave the room. He lingered even after Master Eraqus had gone. Curious, Terra lingered as well in the corridor. If Vanitas had a question or a problem he didn’t feel safe coming to the Master with yet, someone had to be there instead.  
  
Instead of asking anything, however, Vanitas scowled up at him. “How can you listen to that?!” he snapped, almost snarling. “How can you sit there and nod and smile and parrot back what he’s decided are the right answers? It’s – argh!” He kicked the wall, hard enough that it had to hurt, but he didn’t show it.  
  
Terra was confused. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“All that – blar blar darkness is evil forever blar if you get within five miles of it, it will eat your soul – it doesn’t even have to do anything – make sure to beat it with sticks if you ever see any – ” Rather than finish the sentence, he kicked the wall again.  
  
“That’s the truth,” said Terra. “It’s not nice to think about, but it’s the truth, and nothing can change that.”  
  
Vanitas let out a sharp, wordless sound of rage. “Then when do you suggest I schedule my beating? It can be a bonding activity: fun for everyone who isn’t bound to bring about _pernicious consequences_ if they keep breathing near the real people too long!”  
  
“That’s not – you’re not –” That explained why Vanitas had been so tense all through the lesson. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he said, as gently as he could. Maybe this time, Vanitas would believe him.  
  
“That’s not the point! The point is, if you listen to him, you _should_. So why haven’t you? Are you just waiting until I get eaten by my own heart, like that’s ever going to happen, so you can kill something that isn’t talking to you? According to him, it’s going to happen eventually. Why waste the time?”  
  
“Vanitas-!” Terra wasn’t sure what to say. He had it all wrong, of course he did, but Terra couldn’t find the words to explain how.  
  
“He’s wrong,” Vanitas said, in a voice lower but even more viciously intense for that. “He’s wrong, and he’s either stupid or a liar.”  
  
That wasn’t the kind of thing you could say of a Master, especially not after everything Master Eraqus had done. Terra wanted to yell, to tell Vanitas that that was no way to speak of his Master, the person who had taken Terra in, who had taken Vanitas in, when no one else would have, who wanted what was best for everyone.  
  
He couldn’t. Vanitas still didn’t really trust them, especially the Master. He was still struggling to realize how different everything was. Terra knew that. He couldn’t push too hard, especially not by losing his temper. That would just make everything worse. If he didn’t let Vanitas get to him, the other boy would calm down sooner or later and stop trying.  
  
He swallowed the anger. Anger was darkness. He could avoid it, if he really tried. Instead, he said, as calmly as he could, “That’s not true,” turned, and walked away. If he found something else to do soon enough, he would be able to forget Vanitas’s words. They were just said to make him angry. They didn’t deserve to be thought about.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Vanitas fumed. He paced around the span of otherwise empty corridor he’d appropriated for the purpose, Keyblade in hand. He had no intention of using it, but it felt good in his hand, comforting in its own violent way, like a reminder that he was deadly and dangerous and fearsome and _completely capable of taking care of himself_.  
  
It was like they thought he wouldn’t notice. Possibly they thought they were being subtle about it, by their ham-handed standards. It was just the kind of behavior that they _would_ consider subtle. Everything they did was so painfully obvious that not mentioning it in so many words was an achievement for them.  
  
He didn’t understand them. Did they have no memory at all? He was ( **not anymore** – _always_ ) a monster and creator of monsters, just precisely like they were supposed to dedicate their lives to destroying. He was a threat to their world, even if he did nothing but stay, and he wouldn’t, of course. Sooner or later, he would attack them. It would be sooner, if they didn’t stop being so _careful_.  
  
It wasn’t the right kind of care, not the kind he merited. They should be worrying about what he could do to them if he was angered. They should be wary around him like an unexploded bomb. Indeed, they were careful of what they said, of what they did, always going out of their way to stay out of his, but they weren’t afraid of him, and no one could possibly think that they were. They were _sorry_ for him. It was hugely repellent.  
  
He wasn’t weak! He didn’t need their pity, or whatever they called it. He wasn’t going to shatter if someone said a sharp word to him. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know that none of them liked him. It wasn’t going to be a huge and world-shattering surprise.  
  
He rather enjoyed fuming, it occurred to him. It had been a long time since he’d been able to get angry and stay angry for more than a few minutes. The feeling was pleasant in its own way. He liked being able to really _feel_ anger if he wanted to.  
  
As long as everyone kept treating him like he was made of spun glass, he wouldn’t have any shortage of it to feel.  
  
It wasn’t a sensible way to behave; that was the only annoyance that disrupted the smooth, triumphant resentment. They knew that he was tough. They knew that he was powerful. They knew that he was dangerous. They knew that he was dark, with everything that meant to them. They knew everything, and yet the more they knew, the less they treated him the way the knowledge warranted.  
  
No wonder Master Xehanort had walked all over them, he thought, in too high dudgeon to care what that would mean. They would believe anything, anything at all, and take one moment of weakness as a model for every possible interaction, whether or not that made any sense. They would probably welcome Master Xehanort back with open arms as soon as he brought them a suitably contrite story to provide an excuse.  
  
Abruptly, Vanitas realized what he was thinking. The anger drained away, not into hollowness but into an internal tension he recognized all too well. It was the manageable sister to fear.  
  
Master Xehanort was going to come back. Not for him, as he had thought before everything had changed; Master Xehanort ( **might use him, but** – _might want him, but_ ) didn’t need him. There were always more shiftless children with the potential where he had come from. ( **Master Xehanort had said that, before that day, when he had been recalcitrant, and of everything Master Xehanort had said, that was surely not a lie.** ) He should have been grateful to have been chosen. ( _He had been grateful to have been chosen, still was grateful, even if he was never really good enough._ ) If Vanitas no longer served his purpose, Master Xehanort could always find another tool.  
  
Even so, he would come back. This had been his place first, before Vanitas had even existed. The Master was his friend and colleague. There was knowledge and power in this place that was his by right. He might have more plans by now of which Vanitas knew little. It wouldn’t take much: the Master, of all of them, never forgot that Vanitas was not supposed to exist, though he too treated him with the wrong sort of care. Master Xehanort had done nothing wrong. ( **Aqua must still have a scar** – _but she should never have tried to stop a Master in the execution of his duty. That was her wrongdoing, even if –_ **the Master forgave her and Terra both.** ) When he returned, the Master would welcome him readily enough.  
  
Vanitas might be safe, at least for a little while. The Master allowed him to stay, and now Vanitas was no threat unless he chose to be. Or unless his darkness distorted everything around him whether he wanted it to or not, his thoughts said treacherously. No. That was a lie. All Masters, he had to remember, lied about one thing or another. There was no point in putting too much stock in anything they said.  
  
When Master Xehanort came back, he might persuade the Master that Vanitas had to be sent away. The Master would have no problem doing that. He had to know by now that Vanitas could take care of himself and always had.  
  
No one had to know that Vanitas let himself dream a little about that sometimes. He would be able to leave the castle that sometimes pressed too close around him like a cage. He would go out through the central archway and down the path toward where they said the village was, and no one would force him back inside.  
  
And then, once he was out of sight of the castle, Master Xehanort would appear. He would say that Vanitas had proved himself a worthy student. He would say that he had spoken to the Master and gotten Vanitas sent away so he himself could teach Vanitas again. He would say, Vanitas allowed himself to dream, that he was sorry for abandoning Vanitas in the first place, that he had been mistaken. He would say that everything would be better now. And then everything would be back to the way it was meant to be.  
  
It wasn’t as reassuring a dream as it ought to be. If Master Xehanort said that, he would be lying. Masters always lied. He didn’t have to be gentler with Vanitas, anyway. Vanitas wasn’t weak. He could get stronger, no matter what it took. The problem he had here was that no one believed that. He didn’t want Master Xehanort to treat him the way they did.  
  
Master Xehanort wouldn’t want him back, anyway. He might have a new, better pupil by now, one who wouldn’t balk at the least little ( **terrifying, horrible** ) task, one who could use darkness without having to be broken first. He wouldn’t want Vanitas back, not if he had someone like that.  
  
That wasn’t very reassuring either. In retrospect, feeling all his emotions completely might not be all it was cracked up to be.  
  
Vanitas banished his Keyblade. Down in the kitchen, he’d been able to find all the ingredients for one of the simple recipes in the cookbook. If it worked, he would have something to eat that he didn’t have to share with anyone or even tell anyone about. If it didn’t, he would have an excuse to cause some trouble, and then maybe someone would finally notice that he wasn’t a fragile little doll in need of protection from the coldness of the world.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Aqua sighed and tried to concentrate on her work. She was supposed to be reading this chapter and making notes, but the constant muttering from the other side of the table kept dragging her out of the book.  
  
Vanitas didn’t seem to be the least bit distracted from his reading, though he was the one talking. Then again, perhaps he wasn’t paying any attention to begin with. It was hard to tell from where Aqua was sitting.  
  
“This is ridiculous,” he griped. “He already told us this, interminably. And now I’m supposed to write it all down, too? What’s the point?”  
  
“Do you remember everything the Master said?” Aqua asked. There wasn’t much chance Vanitas would listen to her, and she really should be reading, but if she could get him to sit quietly and do _his_ work, then she would finally be able to concentrate.  
  
Vanitas shrugged. “Everything I need to remember. All he did was repeat himself, anyway. I don’t see why I should have to do it all over just because he’s going too senile to remember what he already taught us.”  
  
“He’s not senile!” Vanitas looked up from his notes long enough to stare at her skeptically. Aqua took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to lose her temper and yell at him. She didn’t want to yell at him. He had a hard enough time as it was being around people. She wanted him to feel safe with her, not frightened or anxious the way he still was around Master Eraqus. She just had to remind herself sometimes that he wasn’t being rude on purpose. He just didn’t know any better, and he never would if she blew up at him. “You shouldn’t say that,” she said, gently reproving. “It’s rude, and besides, it isn’t true. The Master gives assignments for a very good reason.”  
  
“Then what reason is that? Is it because I’m not bored enough already?”  
  
Aqua sat up a little straighter. This was something she knew about and could discuss without any risk of losing her temper. “If you’re tired or bored, you could miss something when he talks about it, and then you could be in trouble later. Some people don’t learn as much when they listen as they do when they read, or they learn different things that way.” She never felt she understood something as thoroughly when she was told about it as she did when she read, though Terra was the other way around. He could remember anything the Master actually said, but he didn’t really get into the books the way she did. “Besides, he doesn’t talk about absolutely everything. There are some things he doesn’t have time to talk about thoroughly, but the books can take all the time they want, and so can you.”  
  
Vanitas jabbed a pen at his notepaper. He did not seem in the least appeased. “If the books are so much better, why bother lecturing at all?”  
  
“There’s too much detail. We’d get lost. Sometimes it’s better to start out with the basic outline and fill it in later. Besides, it’s not everyone who likes the books better. Terra doesn’t.”  
  
“ _Terra_.” He scrawled something on his paper that was almost certainly not words at all. “Terra _would_ like being talked at better. No pesky _details_ or other people’s opinions to get in the way of meekly swallowing all the crap the Master sees fit to cram down his throat. He can just jump right to feeling smug about how he knows everything without having to actually think. That’s about his intellectual depth, all right.”  
  
A hot, tight anger swept over Aqua from head to toe. She barely kept her voice below a shout. “Don’t talk about him like that!”  
  
“Why not?” he said without even looking up from his paper. “It’s true. He’s just about bright enough to follow directions and hit what’s in front of him, but he needs someone else to do his thinking for him. Don’t you think it’s a little cruel to let him keep thinking he has what it takes to be a Master?”  
  
Aqua’s chair went over backwards with a clatter as she shot to her feet. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything except the fury boiling through her and the little insouciant smirk on Vanitas’s face, as though he didn’t believe she cared what he said.  
  
“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed, keeping her voice low only out of habit. “What gives you the right to say something like that, even if it were true? Which it isn’t! Terra will be a great Master someday, and you should know that!” Vanitas finally looked up at her, but he didn’t say anything, so she went on. “You have no right to talk about him like that! After everything he’s done for you! He _saved_ you, and you talk about him like this? How dare you!”  
  
Vanitas opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a “No!” and a sharply pointed finger. “You’ve talked enough. Go to your room and stay there until you’re ready to apologize!”  
  
Somewhat to her own surprise, he obeyed, sloping off out of the library door with an uncharacteristically chastened set to his shoulders. Aqua briefly considered following him to make sure that he really went to his room. In the end, however, she decided against it. He could go wherever he liked, as long as it was away from her.  
  
She righted her chair and sat back down, trying to focus once more on her book. For all the sudden lack of distraction, it was some time before her temper cooled enough for her to register any of the words on the page.  
  
Eventually she did, however, and so it was some time later when she was startled out of a particularly complicated diagram by a knock at the library door. Since the library wasn’t anyone’s special space, no one ever knocked. For a brief dizzying moment, Aqua wondered if she had wandered to her room without noticing.  
  
It seemed, however, that the knock had been just to get her attention, for before she said anything it was followed by a head of dark hair leaning around the doorjamb. “Aqua?”  
  
It was Vanitas, of course. She drew in a careful breath and prepared to explain as calmly as she could why his behavior had been inappropriate. She regretted losing her temper, at least a little bit. He might not know that she would never attack him just because she was angry at something he’d said. She hoped she hadn’t frightened him.  
  
He didn’t move as though he was scared, in the wary fashion that said that he was always expecting the world to become a battle without warning. He just looked nervous and a bit sulky. The words that came out of his mouth next were the last ones she’d expected to hear from him.  
  
“I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t really mean it or anything, you know.”  
  
She nodded and waved him into the room. “I accept your apology. But, Vanitas, why would you _say_ something like that?”  
  
Vanitas shrugged. “I don’t know. I just did.”  
  
Aqua was at a loss. There was probably something that she ought to say to make sure that Vanitas understood what he was apologizing for, but she didn’t know what the right words were. Eventually, she said somewhat weakly, “Well, don’t do it again. It’s not nice to say things like that about people, especially if you don’t mean it. It hurts people.”  
  
“I’m not nice,” Vanitas pointed out as though this changed the situation.  
  
“You could be worse.” Of course, he could also be a good deal better, considering the way he took his book and sulked his way back out of the library without another word. Still, he was acting more normally than Aqua had feared. Maybe he was changing, after all.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
It surprised Vanitas sometimes when he forgot that Ven was around. He was still so used to knowing, whether he liked it or not, exactly where Ven was and where he was going that sometimes, now that things were different, he would look up from a thought and discover to his surprise that Ven had been nearby all along and he hadn’t noticed. It was much easier to ignore his existence than it had been before, so much so that he found himself ignoring Ven’s location as a matter of course, unless he particularly wanted to find him or avoid him for one reason or another.  
  
The latter situation didn’t occur half as often as he expected it to. Ven was still an annoying body-thief, of course, but he could have been worse. He didn’t try to follow Vanitas places anymore, either; someone must have finally reminded him what manners were.  
  
He was getting good with a Keyblade, too, good enough that Vanitas had to really work to stay ahead. That fact wasn’t as annoying as it should have been either. Vanitas was only allowed in Ven’s lessons, not the ones with just Terra and Aqua, so until Ven progressed, he couldn’t either. It was better to be working hard than to be bored. He had had enough time in the castle with nothing to do for his lifetime.  
  
There still wasn’t enough to fill his waking hours. He had to wait to sneak into the kitchen until after the last meal, when everyone else was busy and unlikely to show up unexpectedly. Cooking was fun, but he could only slip a few things at a time onto the shopping list that hung in the kitchen before someone noticed. The Master didn’t look over the list too carefully, but if it got a lot longer than usual all of a sudden he might start.  
  
The rest of the time, there was nothing to do but train and read, and they weren’t enough. Training was important, especially if he wanted to stay ahead of Ven, but the Master made him stop if he kept going after a lesson was over. According to the Master, training too much could lead to injury. Vanitas wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t been for the sheepish expression on Terra’s face. As for the library, he could only stay there in the quiet for so long before he got twitchy. He wanted to _run_ , and the castle hallways weren’t good enough. He wanted to explore.  
  
If he climbed out the right window, Vanitas thought, he could probably make it down a tree outside the courtyard. From there he could head up the mountain to the summit or down it toward the town. Either way, though, he would meet the Unversed. The Master was clearing them steadily away from the area around the castle, now that Vanitas wasn’t making more, but there were still a huge number outside, and they didn’t listen to Vanitas anymore. Being devoured by his own wayward emotions was too embarrassing to contemplate.  
  
He leaned further out the window, pressing his hands against the inside of the wall for balance. If he looked out over the castle walls, he could see where the Unversed started to swarm. They hid in the woods, but he could see the movement of their shadows. They were moving toward the castle again, as they always did after the Master had cleared them away. Beyond and around them, there was a whole world waiting that didn’t know him yet. But he couldn’t get there.  
  
“Hey!” said Ven.  
  
Vanitas wasn’t startled, precisely. There was a part of him that still knew where Ven was, and that part kept the rest from being too surprised. He was mostly startled by the reminder that that part of him wasn’t screaming in his head all the time anymore.  
  
He kept leaning out the window. “What do you want?” he said mildly. He didn’t mind being disturbed. It wasn’t as though there was anything time-sensitive about looking at places he was never going to get to see from closer to.  
  
Ven hopped up on the ledge of the next window down. “What’re you looking at? Is there anything happening?”  
  
“Not so you’d notice,” Vanitas said with a sigh. Right now, with an entire afternoon stretching in front of him and nothing in it he felt like doing, he would have welcomed just about anything to fill the time. Bandits, perhaps, or a small invasion.  
  
“Oh.” Ven sounded almost as disappointed as Vanitas felt. “So what are you looking at?”  
  
“Stuff. Everything.” He tilted himself most of the way back inside the window.  
  
Ven, on the other hand, tilted himself forward to stare down at the ground below with its training rings still set up from the morning’s lesson. “It looks so small,” he observed inanely. “But close, too, like I could just reach down and pick it up.”  
  
“Feel free to try, but when they finish putting your organs back together from the splat and ask what got into you, I had nothing to do with it.” It wasn’t a very pleasant mental image. Actually, it was just kind of gross. Vanitas regretted describing it.  
  
“I’m not going to jump out the window!” Ven said. “Not this window, anyway. There’s one around the south side where you can jump out right into a tree!”  
  
“There is?” he asked, interested despite himself. Previously-identical minds thought alike, it seemed. He hadn’t found any escape route that was quite that easy, but then he hadn’t done much climbing out the windows. Most of the time when it would have been safe to do so without anyone else seeing him, it was dark, and he wasn’t quite desperate enough yet to go climbing around for the first time when he could barely see. Though if it came to that, the light here, even at night, was bright enough that he probably wouldn’t put his foot wrong. He just was seldom bored at night. There were other things to do then.  
  
Ven grinned and bounced back in the window like a jack-in-the-box set in reverse. “Yeah, there is! Come on; I’ll show you!”  
  
Nothing better to do having miraculously appeared in the last five minutes, Vanitas followed.  
  
The tree was immense, almost as tall as the entire castle and broad enough that quite a decently-sized house could have nestled in its branches. It had mostly been cut back away from the windows, but one questing branch, as big around as his waist, still bent close enough to reach with a jump. Vanitas felt a grin spread over his face. It was perfect.  
  
Ven was out the window ahead of him. His feet barely touched the branch before he was jumping again, hooking his arms over another branch further up and swinging deeper into the tree, where the leaves hid him from view. “C’mon!” he called back.  
  
Vanitas needed no urging. The moment when his feet left the windowsill, when he was out of the castle, out from under the Master’s watchful eye, even if the Master had no idea he’d escaped, he felt a tension leave his back that he’d never noticed before. He hadn’t climbed in what felt like an age; he’d forgotten, or buried, how much fun it was.  
  
He vaulted from that first branch to a second, different from the one Ven had used. He didn’t have to follow in anyone’s traces. That wanted to take him lower, though, and he wanted to climb, so with a hop and a scramble he pulled himself over onto a friendlier branch that angled upward instead.  
  
From his perch farther up, Ven waved. “You can get into some of the side rooms higher up from here,” he called. “Do you want to see?”  
  
“Show me!” Without another word Ven was off, leaping from branch to branch like he had a route already planned out, which he probably had. Vanitas followed in his footsteps for the moment, only taking a few shortcuts where he could clearly see a better way. He could explore the rest of the tree on his own later. Right now, there was a secret entrance to be discovered.  
  
The side rooms were mostly locked, though Vanitas had, in his own expeditions, unlocked enough of them (relocking them afterwards to leave no trace) to conclude that this was due to disuse rather than prohibition. Certainly there wasn’t anything particularly interesting or dangerous inside them, and he had never been forbidden in so many words from any of the rooms of the castle. Even so, they were not precisely allowed either.  
  
Based on his painstakingly-crafted mental map, the window Ven led him to went into a set of guest bedrooms, all unused now and locked up to gather dust. There were a lot more bedrooms in the castle than visitors.  
  
The window, however, was not locked, and Ven tugged it open by the foolish-looking method of hanging from an upper branch by his knees and walking his hands across the sill and up the window glass to the catch. Vanitas would have laughed at him, if he had had the breath to spare, and also if he had been less elated by the climb.  
  
Once Ven had clambered into the room, Vanitas flipped showily after him. Rather than being jealous, Ven clapped and said, “That was awesome!” Vanitas didn’t really mind the lack of envy in his voice at all.  
  
The room was less impressive than the tree. It was dusty, except for some footprints that were clearly Ven’s, and it was a bedroom without an occupant, and that was really all that could be said for it, objectively speaking. The bed was neatly made, and the tops of the desk and chest of drawers were bare. There was a bookcase, as there was in most of the bedrooms, and it, at least, still had some books on it, but they were dusty as well.  
  
Vanitas sneezed. A bare fraction of a second later, Ven did the same.  
  
For all that, he wasn’t disappointed by the room. It was still locked from the outside, and no one had been inside it for who knew how long except for him and Ven. There was something extremely appealing about that.  
  
Ven didn’t need to know that, though. “Is this it?” Vanitas said, keeping the interest out of his voice.  
  
“You can get into some of the other ones in this row, but they’re mostly just like this one,” said Ven, uncrushed, as though he could sense that Vanitas was really far from disappointed. Perhaps he could. “And a couple on the next storey, but they’re not locked or anything, just old furniture and stuff. After that the branches get too thin.”  
  
Considering how broad the windowsills were, Vanitas speculated privately that he could get into still higher rooms with a jump and a little luck. Ven didn’t need to know that, either, not yet. When Vanitas knew for sure how to get into the highest rooms, he might share the path as a repayment for telling him about the tree in the first place. Or then again he might not and add one to his list of secret places. He could never have too many.  
  
He looked around the room more closely instead of pursuing that line of thought further just at the moment. There were books missing from the shelves, making the bookcase look like a mouth with teeth gone. When he looked at the desk, there was a pad of paper and pen and ink still there, though all three were fuzzy with so much dust that he doubted the ink in the inkwell was still wet. “This isn’t a guest bedroom,” he said aloud, following the thought. “Someone used to live here.”  
  
“Really?” Ven sat up from his position at the window, where he had been bending over backward to stare up at the sky through the leaves. “Who?”  
  
“I don’t know.” There wasn’t much left that would belong to someone in particular. Whoever it was had moved out quite thoroughly. Vanitas drifted back to the bookcase.  
  
 _Advanced Theory of Aggressive Magic_ , he read off one book’s spine, and then another’s, and another’s: _Meteor: Study of a Calamity_ , _The Dark Realm’s Gateways: a Locksmith’s Guide_ , _The Care and Feeding of a Heart_. They all were rather thick and intimidating volumes.  
  
“Someone interesting, I think,” he concluded. “It’s a nice room.”  
  
“You don’t think it’s a little, I don’t know, dark?”  
  
Vanitas scoffed. “It’s in the shade of the tree, idiot. Of course it’s a little dark. That’s what lights are for. Maybe it belonged to an old student here.”  
  
“The Master might know,” Ven offered. “We could ask him.”  
  
“No!” The word came out sharply enough that Ven stiffened and looked at him oddly. Vanitas tried to explain without going so far as to say that there was no point to finding a secret room if everyone knew you’d found it, the Master in particular. “I mean, why bother? Maybe he doesn’t know. Whoever it was hasn’t lived here for a long time.” Seeing that this wasn’t working, he switched tactics to something closer to the truth. “Besides, you’re not supposed to be climbing around, are you? You’ll get in trouble.”  
  
“The Master didn’t say I couldn’t!”  
  
Vanitas had heard that before. In fact, he had used it before. “Did you ask?” At Ven’s shamefaced expression, he smirked. “That’s what I thought. Anyway, isn’t it more interesting as a mystery?”  
  
Ven’s face grew unusually serious. “I don’t like mysteries. That’s just another word for stuff I don’t know.”  
  
“Call it a secret, then. You don’t want to go telling everyone all your secrets, do you? That spoils the point of them.” There was more honesty to that argument than Vanitas really liked, but if it did the job, he didn’t mind.  
  
It did. Ven shrugged and said, “I guess not. But maybe we could find out on our own, and then it could be a real secret, and _not_ a mystery!”  
  
“Yeah, why not?” There was a certain appeal to the idea of tracking down the mysterious former owner of a locked bedroom.  
  
Not, however, as much appeal as there was to the idea of going back into the tree while the sun was high and the wind was warm. Vanitas did a handspring over Ven’s head and into the branches again. “Race you back down!” he called as he flipped past.  
  
After that, everything was breathless, laughing scrambling from limb to limb, twigs and leaves catching in his clothes and hair, dropping and jumping and catching himself and dropping again through the sun-dappled cavern of the tree. Ven beat him to the window, but only just, and Vanitas couldn’t, somehow, find it in himself to mind too deeply.  
  
It was hours later when he realized that he still hadn’t stopped smiling, nor had the lightness left his step. (Nor had all of the twigs left his hair, as he discovered when Aqua plucked one out at the dinner table, but that was nothing worth being concerned over.) It was a strange feeling. He rather thought he liked it.  
  
And Ven wasn’t so bad, either, really, when it came right down to it.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Things seemed to be settling down, Eraqus thought. He could admit in his own head that by ‘things’ he largely meant Vanitas, of course, who was one way or another the source of most of the turmoil in the castle.  
  
It had been so peaceful, he thought wistfully. Terra and Aqua had never made any trouble when they had been the only children. Now he was burdened with two more – not that Ventus was a burden, but he required a great deal of attention, as well as a completely separate lesson plan. He couldn’t be expected to keep up with the others, not starting more or less fresh as he was, but it meant spending more time than Eraqus was accustomed to. As for Vanitas, he ought to have an eye kept on him all the time, but far too often Eraqus had no eyes to spare. His students did their best, but they were, after all, still students, and they might not recognize an impending disaster until too late.  
  
All else aside, there was no denying that Vanitas was decidedly a teaching problem in need of careful handling. Ventus really would benefit from separate lessons to allow him to catch up, but Vanitas had as yet done nothing to deserve being banned from training so suddenly, and there was no question of giving him private instruction as well. Even if there had been the time, he would have gotten little out of it. After all that had transpired, it was clear that Vanitas did not trust Eraqus as a teacher. Every difficulty his lack of trust caused in group instruction would only be exacerbated in an individual lesson.  
  
The two of them were doing passably well together. Ventus showed no sign of resenting the addition to his training sessions; quite the reverse, in fact. As for Vanitas, guessing what he truly resented as opposed to what he only pretended to resent for some obscure purpose of his own was always a trial, but at least he restricted his commentary to complaining at Ventus after the lesson’s end. It was something rather like a conversation, which was an improvement. Ventus certainly seemed to treat it as such. The quiet boy of mere months before was almost unrecognizable in the way he chattered with Vanitas, seeming not to mind the perpetual insults. As far as that went, no offense seemed to be taken by either party, so Eraqus chose not to be concerned. It was an odd relationship to have with someone who had used to share one’s heart, but if it contented them, there was no reason to curtail it.  
  
Naturally, immediately after this thought crossed his mind, he walked into the training hall just in time to witness Vanitas leap at Ventus with murder in his eyes.  
  
“You can’t say that about him!”  
  
Perhaps murder was overstating the case somewhat: Vanitas’s Keyblade was not in evidence. He seemed bound and determined, however, to use his fists in as deadly a manner as possible.  
  
After the first blow knocked him back, Ventus returned as good as he got. “I can so! He deserves it and I hope you never see him again!”  
  
Eraqus observed the flailing ball of limbs that followed this pronouncement and seriously considered going out and coming back later. This was not a problem he wished to deal with. Whatever the cause of their argument might be, it was clearly theirs to sort out to their mutual satisfaction. He had no wish to be an arbiter unless he was appealed to. Aqua and Terra had been bad enough. Now that they were beyond that phase, Eraqus had hoped never to be confronted with the ridiculous exchange of he-said-she-said again.  
  
As he was on the point of leaving them to it, however, a change occurred in the scuffle. Ventus began to shine as he had not in several weeks; Vanitas, on the other hand, was visibly shadowed.  
  
Eraqus had each of them by the collar, dragging them apart, before the implications had fully sunk into his head. As soon as they realized what had happened, they subsided, which was fortunate, as it helped him to restrain the powerful urge to shake sense into them both.  
  
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.  
  
“He said –” Ventus began, but Vanitas glared at him, and he said no more. Eraqus did not particularly care about the cause of the fight in any case.  
  
What he cared about was the fact that the fight had occurred at all. “You are not to fight. Have you already forgotten what you are? What you could become, if you fought each other?”  
  
“But we didn’t,” Vanitas complained, which was ridiculous on the face of it, considering the bruise slowly rising on his cheekbone. He must have realized this, for he elaborated, “Not _real_ fighting. Not even sparring!”  
  
Eraqus was not appeased. Vanitas could not have forgotten so quickly the purpose he had been created for. “And did you think that only a battle of Keyblades was a fight? Your childish squabble could have been enough to destroy you and us all.”  
  
Ventus looked both shocked and contrite. “I didn’t mean to!”  
  
“Be that as it may. You should have known better. _Both_ of you should have known better. This is beyond recklessness. Both of you, go to your rooms. There will be no lesson today, nor all this week, as punishment for your inability to control your tempers. You are confined to the castle. Let this be a lesson to the pair of you.”  
  
The point driven home, he thought, sufficiently for the moment, he dropped them. Vanitas fled immediately, but Ventus took his time about leaving, blue eyes mournful. Eraqus felt a momentary pang of regret. Perhaps it would be better to let Vanitas’s punishment stand but take advantage of the time to give Ventus the private instruction he deserved. He had not been the one to start the fight, after all.  
  
No, he concluded reluctantly. He had issued a punishment to both equally, and he would hold to it. A week would do Ventus’s progress no serious harm, and it might curb his impulsiveness. As for Vanitas, it might serve as a reminder that there were proportionate consequences to his actions.  
  
In a week, perhaps, Eraqus himself might have suppressed the wild terror that that flash of light and shadow had produced in him. The chi-blade was danger beyond imagining. Its creation would presage a second Keyblade War, which could easily destroy everything Eraqus had worked all his life to preserve. And all the ingredients necessary for its forging were within his very walls.  
  
The ingredients were so close together, in fact, that the chi-blade had almost been forged by a single childish scuffle. With Vanitas’s tendency to bait people, it might have happened some time when Eraqus had not been there to see what was about to occur. It might yet happen again, if Vanitas did not care about the consequences sufficiently to allow them to alter his behavior.  
  
Steps would have to be taken. He could not allow such a risk. It would be a betrayal of his entire life, his entire purpose. His teacher, rest her soul, would never forgive him.  
  
All could be remedied, if there were only some other place for Vanitas to go, some other person Eraqus could trust to see that he caused no further harm to the worlds. But there was no such person. Yen Sid was resigned from the duties of Mastery, and he was in any case too old now to handle the regimen of training that it took to keep Vanitas too occupied to cause trouble.  
  
Eraqus admitted to himself, in the interest of perfect honesty, that, if it was required, Yen Sid could undoubtedly handle a score of boys like Vanitas, albeit not in the way that Eraqus would do so. The fact was that he did not wish to present the boy as his failure. So many years, and he still worried about doing his predecessor proud, or about shaming her through incompetence. Yen Sid was an alternative, but only if no other choice presented itself. As for anyone else…there was no one else, it seemed. He knew of but one other Master, and Xehanort was not under any circumstances an alternative. If he had made Vanitas to create the chi-blade, he would certainly not prevent any accident that might result in its formation.  
  
Thinking of Xehanort ached, now, somewhere deep inside his heart. He could not help but ask himself a thousand times: should he have known? Had there been some clear sign that he had missed? Was there a single moment when he had failed to act, or had acted wrongly, to prevent all this from coming to pass?  
  
They had been as close as brothers, once. Eraqus had not known of the darkness lurking in Xehanort’s heart, all that time until the day when their Master, now their colleague, had said that one of them would follow her into the service of this castle of balance, and had named Eraqus. He had not understood the reason why: Xehanort was senior to him in age, and no less in skill with blade or spell. Indeed, he was far more the scholar than Eraqus had ever been.  
  
He had asked their Master why, then, and she had told him the whole at last: Xehanort, for all the brilliance of his mind and his light, had a strain of darkness in him that went too deep for their Master to be wholly satisfied with him as Successor. (Eraqus wondered, now, if that had been the whole after all, if the Master had seen as well the particular nature of that strain, if she had guessed somehow what would come of it.) He had never spoken of his knowledge to Xehanort. It would have been cruel to dwell on the reason for his passing-over, though Xehanort had never expressed any jealousy. Indeed, he had taken up a nomadic life, ever in quest for more knowledge, which had seemed to suit him perfectly.  
  
Perhaps it had begun there. Or perhaps it had not. Perhaps it had begun before they had met, or after they had parted. It was only later, certainly, that Eraqus had first seen proof of the darkness in Xehanort’s heart.  
  
Had it been then that he should have acted? The darkness had been right before his eyes, as had the bent of Xehanort’s intentions. Yet he had not been able to find it in himself to do other than he had done. Xehanort had been so contrite over his loss of control. What else could he have done but forgive the injury of the moment?  
  
He had been remiss, all the same. He had chosen to forget Xehanort’s words, to dismiss them as a passing whim driven by the darkness that was now beaten back into invisibility once more. It had not, he knew now, been a whim, and if it was driven by the darkness, then so too was Xehanort. He had gone farther down that path than Eraqus’s darkest nightmares had ever imagined, and still Eraqus could not see when it had all begun.  
  
He was woolgathering. Xehanort would wait for another day. A large part of him, indeed, hoped that the day of final reckoning would never come. The rest knew that it would, and he must be prepared for it.  
  
That meant dealing with Vanitas. It was a tangled and obdurate problem, but Eraqus would handle it. Perhaps it was his punishment, for all he had left undone.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Being confined to the castle was only a punishment to the Master, considering that he wasn’t allowed to leave anyway, but the Master’s opinion was enough to make it a nuisance. At seemingly random intervals, the Master would go looking for Vanitas, and if he didn’t happen to be somewhere easily found, then when he did surface there would be an accusation waiting. It was stupid: he hadn’t said that Vanitas was confined to the commonly-used rooms in the castle. And with no training, what was he supposed to do in them if he did stay there?  
  
Watching Aqua and Terra had palled in short order. He’d thought it one of the better ways to spend his time before, but compared to actually training himself it unsurprisingly ceased to appeal. There was the library, which he couldn’t make a serious dent in if he read for a year, but after another day it, too, began to bore him.  
  
Even the kitchen couldn’t keep him from feeling like he was fizzing inside. No one seemed to particularly care about what he was up to there. He ran through all the ingredients he thought the cupboards could spare, and all that happened was that Aqua commented on the flavor of the leftover pudding. It still didn’t help enough. He couldn’t think straight when he wasn’t training. Waiting for things to cook became more aggravating than calming.  
  
He ran instead, around and around the castle until his breath came short and his legs ached. He ran up and down every flight of stairs from attics to cellars, most of them twice. It was boring to his mind, but it shut his body up enough that he could sleep.  
  
Ven was making himself scarce, and a good thing too, since every time they crossed paths Vanitas wanted to bite his head off a little more, figuratively if literally would be too much trouble. It was all his fault. If he hadn’t said ( **the truth** – _the worst lie_ ) what he’d said, Vanitas wouldn’t be in trouble now, and he wouldn’t feel so much as though he was about to vibrate right out of his body.  
  
The worst part of all that was that he _couldn’t_ bite Ven’s head off, or even rough him up a bit to teach him manners. If he did, that could be the end of both of them. When he thought about it, now, Vanitas couldn’t remember if Master Xehanort had ever explained what would happen to him if he and Ven forged the chi-blade. They might be put back together in one person, but then again, they might not. Maybe not even Master Xehanort knew for sure what would happen now that they were both tied to other people’s hearts. It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to make the chi-blade anymore. It was a little bit frightening as a prospect.  
  
If he didn’t find something else to do, though, he might consider it again, just to break the monotony. Vanitas catapulted off the stair rail and down the corridor. The training hall ought to be empty by now, and the Master hadn’t forbidden him to do a little practice on his own. It wasn’t anything like training for real with another person to tell him when he got it right, but it had to be better than nothing.  
  
The hall wasn’t empty. Vanitas skidded to a stop too late to escape Terra’s notice.  
  
“What are _you_ doing here?” he said as rudely as he knew how. Terra’s lesson was over; the Master was off doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t actively engaged in telling people the right way to beat each other’s faces in. There was no call for Terra to still be loitering in the training hall.  
  
“Training,” said Terra as though it was obvious. It sort of was, Vanitas had to admit. The Keyblade was a dead giveaway.  
  
That didn’t mean he had to appreciate the answer. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he complained. “Your lesson was over.”  
  
“I wanted to practice a little more. Were you looking for the Master? I think he went –”  
  
“I wasn’t looking for him. I wasn’t looking for anyone. That was the entire point. You shouldn’t be here.”  
  
Terra wasn’t particularly impressed by Vanitas’s logic. “I’m not the one who’s grounded.”  
  
Now Vanitas was the extremely unimpressed one. “We’re not supposed to leave the _castle_. Big deal. I can go anywhere I want.” He hadn’t seen Ven on his afternoon run, now he thought of it. Maybe the idiot was sleeping through the week. That might be less boring, if he got interesting dreams out of it. Vanitas suspected that if he were to fall asleep right now he would dream of a maze of winding white passages, all alike.  
  
Terra apparently decided not to care what Vanitas was doing. “You can stay, if you want. There’s plenty of room.”  
  
“Oh, yes, because the most fascinating thing I can think of doing is watching you spin around in circles. It’s positively thrilling.” The worst part was that under the sarcasm was the truth. Whatever Terra was doing was bound to be more interesting than Vanitas’s other options. Besides, the way he got when he was concentrating, he wouldn’t notice if Vanitas painted the walls bright teal, let alone ran through a few combination sequences.  
  
In truth, Vanitas could probably have gotten away with practicing on his own even if the Master had been present. There was, however, one small detail that enforced secrecy: he had no intention of practicing with the rubbish wooden practice sword he had to use under the Master’s eye. The thing was so cold and useless. He had no idea how Ven could seem so satisfied with it, having even once held a real Keyblade.  
  
He positioned himself so Terra couldn’t see what he was holding without turning half around and peering over Vanitas’s shoulder. Incurious as ever, Terra went back to his whatever-it-was without asking further questions. That was the best he would get, so Vanitas flexed his hand and let his Keyblade fall into it.  
  
He’d never gone so long without using it before, not since he’d first learned to call it. He held it all the time, in his room where no one would be the wiser, since they were so obsessive about knocking, but that was just a pale reminder so that his hand wouldn’t forget its shape – or vice versa; he wasn’t sure, after seeing his old Keyblade in Ven’s hands, which was more likely. This was the real thing.  
  
Well, not quite the real thing: he didn’t have anything to hit but empty air and his imagination’s version of the Master’s Keyblade. Even that, though, was better by far with his Keyblade than with a wooden sword.  
  
He started at the beginning of his personal favorite sequence, a quick and powerful set of moves that he liked for no reason he could fully explain. It just felt natural to him in a way that the others didn’t. It made a good warm-up. He knew it so well that he could run through it first at full speed, then at half, then up to double speed just to see if he could move fast enough without tripping over his own feet.  
  
That wasn’t the sequence he needed to practice, though. In a few days, Ven would be having lessons again, and Vanitas refused to have fallen behind in just a week. He would have improved on his own, and then the Master would be surprised and pleased by how much better Vanitas was than he had expected. Not that Vanitas cared what the Master thought, but it would be nice to show him up. The sequence they had been working on was too slow and took, apparently, a precision and control that Vanitas lacked. The only reassuring part of the whole debacle that had been their last real lesson was that Ven was not much better. He would have it mastered, though, Vanitas vowed, by the end of the week. He would not let it defeat him. He went through it, and stumbled – actually stumbled – on the same guard change that had been giving him trouble before. He would get it eventually, he told himself, and tried again. And again. And again.  
  
“You’re doing that wrong.”  
  
Vanitas jumped half out of his skin and spun into a high horizontal strike. Naturally, he could do _that_ without having to think about it, but a basic change of guard position at half the speed kept defeating him.  
  
The blow even landed, for all the difference it made. Terra barely seemed to notice it. “It’s just me.”  
  
He tried to rein in his harsh breathing. It was just exertion, but it made him sound frightened when he was nothing of the kind. “Did I ask you to sneak up on me like that?”  
  
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought you heard me.”  
  
“Obviously, I didn’t.” Vanitas had been the one concentrating too hard to notice what was going on around him this time, apparently. “Did you want something, or is distracting me just your new hobby.”  
  
“You’re doing that wrong,” Terra repeated. Before Vanitas could tell him what he thought of this statement of the blatantly obvious, he went on, “Your body’s out of position at the end of the third strike, so when you go to switch to low guard, your shoulders get there before your feet, and it’s throwing you off.”  
  
“…What does that even mean?” The third strike was landing just as it should be. It was after that where he started messing up somehow.  
  
Watching Terra search for words was something less of a pleasure when he actually wanted to hear them. At least Terra gave up quickly and switched to something more helpful. “Look. Here’s the whole thing, right?”  
  
Of course _Terra_ didn’t trip over his own two feet, even though the trailing hems of his pants had to make it easy to do. That would have been entirely too delightful to be allowed. “Yeah. So?” It looked like just what Vanitas was doing to him.  
  
“So, the third strike ends up over _here_ , and if you’re doing it on its own you step into it. But if you do that here, when you have to switch into a guard over _here_ , you have to move that foot, but all your weight’s on it, so you can’t, and you lose the rhythm trying to switch back.”  
  
That seemed reasonable, but there was one major hole in it to Vanitas’s eye. “But if I don’t step into it, I’ll just mess up the strike, and then I won’t even get to the guard.” This was a stupid sequence that ought to feel stupid, in his studied opinion.  
  
“What you have to do is lean in with the other foot instead, like this.”  
  
That looked like it might work, if Terra was right about the problem he thought Vanitas was having at least, but… “That’s not how the strike is supposed to go.”  
  
“It’s different if you’re doing it on its own. Mixed in with the rest, you have to change some things.”  
  
“Then why didn’t the Master tell me to change it?” True, he had been having enough trouble getting as far as the end of the third strike, but Terra didn’t have to know that. If the Master had really wanted to, he could easily have told Vanitas anyway.  
  
Terra shrugged, a small smile on his face. “He makes it into a test, sometimes, to see if you’ll keep doing what you were taught or change it yourself to make it work.”  
  
That didn’t make any sense, and Vanitas refused to believe it. The Master wanted him to do what he was told, not what worked. That was and always had been the entire problem. He would never make a test like that. “You can’t be serious.”  
  
“It’s true. It took me a while to get it, when he did it with me,” Terra admitted. “Aqua got it right away.”  
  
That, Vanitas could believe. Terra never, ever did anything wrong, or even anything right that the Master might not like ( **except for** … _that didn’t count_ ). It would take him forever to think that the Master might have left something out on purpose. Not that he believed that the Master would do any such thing. That would actually be a practical lesson, and those were completely contrary to the Master’s style of education.  
  
“It doesn’t make sense.” He gave voice to his thoughts. “He always gets mad when I change things that don’t work if it’s not the way he wants it done.” He still couldn’t call forth even a spark by the backwards method the Master had imposed on him, and there was no chance of slipping a more effective one under his eye with the way he watched Vanitas like a hawk during magic lessons.  
  
From the way Terra took a moment to get his thoughts, such as they were, in order, Vanitas suspected that there was a secondhand lecture on the way. Sure enough, when Terra did open his mouth, he said, “It’s about the difference between practice and real combat. In training, you can do one strike or one block over and over again until you do it perfectly, and your partner will do the corresponding one. But in the real world, when you’re dealing with something that really wants to hurt you, that won’t be true. They won’t always set you up for the move you expect, so you have to practice changing your attack to match the opening you have. If you get too attached to the way it’s supposed to be done, you won’t be able to change your footwork fast enough to keep up, and you’ll get hurt.”  
  
Like virtually all the secondhand lectures, that one was completely unhelpful. “I don’t need him to teach me how to react in a real fight. He’s the one who was so insistent that I do everything just the way he wanted it done, even if that wasn’t the way that it was going to work. How come he gets to change his mind now?” The obvious and most true answer, of course, was that he got to change his mind as many times as he liked, because he was the Master, and Vanitas wasn’t even a student. But Terra probably believed that there was some other reason, and Vanitas wanted to know what it was.  
  
“You have to do it that way at first because it’s the best way, and if you’re sloppy at the start, then later on when things do change you’ll get even sloppier and start running into trouble. Like…if you don’t have the right stance, then even though there are some things you can still do fine, if he asks you to do something that doesn’t work in the wrong stance, you won’t be able to do it, and you’ll have to learn it all over. It all goes step by step.”  
  
That almost made sense. Vanitas resented this fact. Terra had no right to make any sense. Not that he agreed with spending valuable time on something so obvious. If he were still – if he had a different teacher, he would be moving on to much more advanced techniques rather than  hovering over these until they were perfect enough. ( **And how many bones would he break before learning those unforgiving techniques?** _Pain was the greatest teacher. If he couldn’t learn fast enough, it would motivate him to be brighter._ **He couldn’t learn anything with a broken sword arm.** )  
  
“I can show you again, if you want?” Terra looked hopeful, like it was some kind of present to him to get to go through lessons that he must have finished ages ago.  
  
Unfortunately, Vanitas couldn’t quite picture how the changed footwork was supposed to go, so crushing Terra’s hopes would have to wait for another day. “If it’ll make you stop lecturing me, go right ahead. You’re not my teacher.”  
  
“It goes faster if we teach each other,” said Terra, running through the sequence flawlessly, blast him. “Now you try.”  
  
Blast him twice, once Vanitas remembered to switch his other foot forward, he pulled back smoothly into the next block just the way he should have been doing all along. “If the Master gets angry when he sees, I’m telling him you told me to do it,” he warned.  
  
Terra didn’t seem worried. “He won’t be mad. He’ll be proud.”  
  
A statement so wildly ignorant didn’t deserve an answer. The Master had less chance of being proud of anything Vanitas did than of deciding to dye his hair magenta. The best Vanitas could hope for was grudging approval, coupled with a mental upward reassessment of his threat level.  
  
“Hey, do you want to spar?” Terra asked. He wasn’t nearly as put off as he should be by Vanitas’s scowl. Vanitas was probably overusing it. “It’s not as much fun without someone to fight.”  
  
Vanitas hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to fight for anything like real, especially not Keyblade to Keyblade – but no, he remembered, he wasn’t supposed to fight _Ven_ because pure light against pure darkness was what it took to forge the chi-blade. Terra had darkness of his own. Vanitas didn’t have to care about consequences. Except, possibly, for being hurt, but Terra was indisputably the type to pull his blows, and it wasn’t as though Vanitas had never been hit before. Sparring wasn’t going to kill him. “You’re on.”  
  
He could tell Terra was going easy on him, but he had a few tricks that no one here knew, and he was faster on his feet besides. It was nothing like even, all the same, but he scored one hit that he was quite sure Terra hadn’t meant to let through. That was oddly satisfying for something so small.  
  
“See?” he said, panting for breath between clashes. “You don’t have to go easy on me.”  
  
“Practice more, and we’ll see,” Terra replied. He was grinning.  
  
Vanitas found that he was, too.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Being grounded sucked, Ven concluded mournfully five days into the week. Terra and Aqua were getting to train, but he wasn’t, and practicing on his own was boring. He couldn’t wait until the week was over. Well, he probably could, since he had to, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to have something to do.  
  
The funny thing was that when he wasn’t grounded, he was perfectly happy to stay inside the castle for days at a time. There were still so many places he hadn’t explored, rooms full of odd trinkets or paintings of strange people. But somehow, as soon as he was forbidden to go outside, outside instantly became the only place he wanted to be.  
  
The weather was perfect, which made it worse. It had been raining all the week before; why couldn’t it have kept on? Then he wouldn’t have been able to go outside anyway, and everyone would have been stuck home with him. Instead, Terra and Aqua were as busy as ever, and Ven was alone for a larger chunk of the day than he knew what to do with.  
  
There was Vanitas, technically, but Ven wasn’t speaking to Vanitas, or Vanitas wasn’t speaking to him, or maybe both. It wasn’t Ven’s fault they were grounded. Vanitas had been the one to attack him. He didn’t want to speak to Vanitas anyway, at least not until he stopped being so…so _weird_. Ven was sick of weird.  
  
He still kind of, sort of, wished they were speaking. It would be a lot more bearable to be grounded if he had someone to hang out with. They could invent games to play, or something. Anything would be better than kicking around the castle getting steadily more and more bored.  
  
He leaned a little closer to the window latch. The tree outside was so inviting, sunlight shining green through the leaves onto the closest branch. It was a perfect day outside. And up in the row of secret rooms – not that they were really secret, but it was a secret that Ven had been in them – there might be something to do or see. There were rooms he hadn’t really explored before, because they were just storage. Anything might be in them.  
  
It wasn’t _really_ breaking the rules if he just went outside to get from one room to another, was it? Armed with this somewhat delicate reasoning, and armored with the certainty that no one was around to catch him, Ven flicked the latch open and scrambled out into the tree.  
  
The rough bark was its own kind of comfort. He liked the feeling of it scraping against his palms. The smooth stone inside the castle sometimes felt almost too perfect to be real.  
  
He might as well start out in the bedroom, he thought. There might be some kind of hint to who the person living in it had been, tucked away somewhere and forgotten when they had moved out. He might discover a real secret.  
  
But, when he jumped through the open window, he didn’t find a secret. He found Vanitas.  
  
The other boy was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the bed, reading a book. He looked up at the sound of Ven’s heels hitting the floor, and his face darkened. “Oh. It’s you.”  
  
Ven felt rather like saying the same thing. This was his place, his discovery. He’d showed it to Vanitas, but that didn’t mean he wanted someone else crawling all over it like it was his, especially not when he wasn’t speaking to Ven. That felt too much like Vanitas was taking it away from him, the way he talked about wanting to take everything away from Ven sometimes. (Ven was aware that he wasn’t being fair: Vanitas hadn’t talked about anything of the kind in quite a while, ages in terms of all that had happened in the time. But he was in no mood to be charitable.)  
  
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he said.  
  
Vanitas didn’t seem to care. “Says who? You’re ‘not supposed to’ be here either. Climbing trees when you’re grounded; what _would_ the Master think?”  
  
That opened up a whole new threat. “If you tell, I’ll tell that you did it too, and then you’ll be in trouble just as much as me.”  
  
“I’m not a tattletale,” said Vanitas, sounding really offended. Ven didn’t know he could sound offended other than for show. “Anyway, you don’t know I didn’t come in through the door like a regular person. That wouldn’t be leaving the castle.”  
  
“But you didn’t.” This was flagrantly obvious to Ven: with the sun shining and the breeze blowing, there was no way Vanitas hadn’t been as tempted by the tree as Ven had.  
  
“But you can’t _prove_ it.” Sensing perhaps that he’d won the argument, Vanitas went back to his book – and back to ignoring Ven, like Ven was some kind of toy he could just switch off and not care about until he wanted to again.  
  
Ven didn’t like being ignored. It made him feel shaky inside, like he had to double check that he still existed. Besides, Vanitas was being a jerk. He flopped down on the desk chair, leaning over the back, and asked a question Aqua had told him never to ask someone who was concentrating on a book. “What are you reading?”  
  
Vanitas growled low in his throat but didn’t look up. Ven repeated the question, and this time he snapped, “A book. What’s it to you?”  
  
“I’m curious,” Ven admitted readily. Vanitas didn’t seem to like a lot of books very much, even though he read a lot of them. Ven didn’t understand it. “Is it a good book?”  
  
“It’s a _very_ good book.” It was kind of amusing how he didn’t tell Ven to go away, but Ven could hear him thinking it perfectly well in a way that had nothing to do with being connected.  
  
He didn’t want to go away. This was his secret place first, and anyway, he was tired of being mad at Vanitas. They’d been getting along better, and now he was bored and kind of sad and had no one to be either of those things with to make it better. So instead of climbing back out the window the way Vanitas clearly wanted him to, he said, “I’m sorry about what I said.”  
  
That made Vanitas look up from the book again. “You’re not going to say you didn’t mean it?” he goaded, because he never left anything alone.  
  
“I did mean it,” Ven replied. He wasn’t going to budge on this. “And I still mean it, but I didn’t mean to upset you, so I’m sorry, and I don’t want to fight anymore.”  
  
“We’re not fighting anymore anyway,” said Vanitas. “Chi-blade, remember?”  
  
“Not that kind of fighting! I mean, not talking or doing things or being friends or anything nice.” Vanitas could fight a lot without actually hitting anyone. It was one of the things he was best at, or so it seemed to Ven. He didn’t like it much, especially not when it was aimed at him, and he couldn’t think of anything to say back.  
  
He laughed sharply. “We’re not friends. Who’s friends with themselves?”  
  
Ven considered this. “…A lot of people?” he said finally. “If you like who you are, and you do things by yourself for fun, isn’t that just like being friends with yourself?” Going by the blank look on Vanitas’s face, that didn’t make as much sense out loud as it did in Ven’s head. “I think it’s like that, anyway.”  
  
“Whatever.” But Vanitas didn’t argue the point. What he said next was, “Anyway, I’m not sorry I hit you. You deserved it, for speaking ill of a Master.”  
  
“I only said the truth!” Ven objected. “And he doesn’t deserve to be a Master, if that’s how he treats his students. He shouldn’t ever have been allowed.” A Master was supposed to be fair and good, and take care of people who couldn’t take care of themselves. Someone who wasn’t any of those things, who made people hurt just to see what would happen, couldn’t possibly be a real, proper Master. That was just obvious.  
  
Vanitas didn’t seem to see it the same way. He snapped the book closed and practically yelled, “A Master can do whatever he pleases! It’s not any of your business how he chooses to teach his pupils!”  
  
“It is so my business!” Ven shot back. “He took me and cut me in pieces just exactly as much as you! I was his pupil too, and it’s my business even if I can’t remember it!”  
  
“That makes it even worse! If he was your Master, then it’s the worst thing you can do to say something like that. If he could hear you –”  
  
“But he _can’t_ hear me! And he’s not my Master anymore, and I don’t remember him being my Master, so I don’t owe him anything. After what he did, I wouldn’t owe him anything even if I did, and neither do you!”  
  
“If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be here! Don’t tell me you regret it.”  
  
That was almost a poser, but Ven was undeterred. “If it weren’t for him, I’d be you, and you’d be me, and we wouldn’t have both almost died because of him.”  
  
“No, we would have _really_ died because of him not being there to take us in. Everything you have, everything I have, we have because he did that. It’s not something we ever _stop_ owing him. It’s my _life_.”  
  
“That’s not true!” It couldn’t be true. Master Xehanort clearly didn’t do anything good at all. He’d been cruel and nasty and horrible, even before he’d split Ven off and gotten rid of him like it didn’t matter one bit that he could have died. They didn’t owe him anything real.  
  
“How do you know? You don’t remember when he picked us up. You don’t even remember _where_. And I know you don’t, because you want to go back to it! There’s nothing there worth going back for, because everything you ever had that was worth anything, you had because of him.”  
  
“I don’t believe you! You’re just saying that because you remember everything. You know where your _family_ is.”  
  
“ _You don’t have a family!_ ”  
  
Ven reeled back from the intensity in Vanitas’s voice, as thick and sharp as blood.  
  
Without pause, Vanitas went on, “Your family _died_ , years ago, and when they were gone there was _no one_ , no one in all the worlds, who _ever_ cared if you lived or died, until he came and took you away from that _hellhole_ , and you’ll never stop owing him for that as long as you live, no matter what happened after that. You should be _glad_ to be part of his plans.”  
  
That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. And even if it were true, it wasn’t right. If Master Xehanort had seen him, them, in trouble, then helping them was no more than what he should have done. It didn’t give him a right to do any of the things he’d done, or treat Vanitas the way he still acted like he expected to be treated. Ven was sure of that much. He just couldn’t find the right words to say it around the echoing shock.  
  
He’d thought about his family a lot, since the first time Aqua got a letter from her parents by messenger bird and spent hours and hours writing a huge long reply. It hadn’t really sunk in before then that she had a family in the outside world, that the castle wasn’t really an island unto itself no matter how much it felt like one. He’d wondered now and then since then where his family was, what they were like, if they were missing him. Hearing that they were dead and he still couldn’t remember the least little detail about them hurt all through him.  
  
“I don’t owe him,” he said eventually, too sober now to shout. “I don’t owe him anything. He only saved my life once, and then he tried to destroy it, so now we’re even on that, and I can say what I think about him.”  
  
“That’s not how it works,” Vanitas protested.  
  
“It is! You say he gave me things, but he tried to take them all away again, and it’s nothing to do with him that he didn’t succeed all the way. If he just gave me things to take them away, it wasn’t really a gift, and I don’t have to be grateful.”  
  
“That’s _not_ how it works!”  
  
“Well, how _does_ it work, then?”  
  
“He gave us our lives back then, so everything that happened because we were still alive after that happened because of him. He owns us.”  
  
“He got rid of us. He threw us out like we weren’t worth anything, and even if he did own us, he doesn’t anymore!” He couldn’t own them, anyway. No one could own people. That wasn’t how it worked at all, no matter what.  
  
“Shut up!” Vanitas shrank back a bit out of Ven’s face, but he changed tacks rather than backing down. “Anyhow, it doesn’t matter, because you can’t talk like that about a Master, whether he’s yours or not. So there!”  
  
“I can so! Why can’t I?”  
  
Vanitas sputtered a bit. “Because – that’s practically treason, or something! You can’t disrespect one Master, because that’s as bad as disrespecting all Masters. If someone hears you – if the Master hears you –”  
  
“That’s not a real rule,” Ven objected. It certainly wasn’t any rule he’d ever heard before, and the Master surely would have told him something that important. Lying was the forbidden thing, not telling the truth, and being respectful didn’t extend to a Master who’d tried to destroy him, he was almost positively sure. That didn’t make much sense as a rule. If he couldn’t say bad things about someone under those circumstances, then he wouldn’t be able to say bad things about anyone at all.  
  
“It _is_. You can’t just go and disrespect him just because you’re mad. He’s a _Master_. After all this time, do you not know _anything_? Do you know what the Master would _do_ if he heard you?”  
  
“He’d get all quiet and sad, the way he does every time someone mentions Master Xehanort.” It had happened a few times, and nothing bad had happened. There couldn’t be a rule against it, or Aqua would have gotten in trouble by now.  
  
Vanitas snorted. “Believe what you want, if it makes you feel better. Just keep your mouth shut.” But he did relax a little, the way he did when he expected something bad to happen and it didn’t. That meant the fight was over, and Ven had won, because if Vanitas won, Ven would be scared of the Master, and he wasn’t.  
  
It wasn’t polite to gloat, though. “I’m bored,” he said to change the subject. “Want to go poke around in the attics for hidden treasure?”  
  
“There isn’t any hidden treasure in that attic, stupid,” said Vanitas, but he put the book he’d been reading down on the bed and got to his feet.  
  
As it turned out, there wasn’t, but finding that fact out was a lot more fun with someone else to help invent uses for the oddly-shaped objects that filled the attics.  
  


* * *

 

The Master let Vanitas go back to training after a week precisely, the way he’d said he would, and none too soon: no amount of running around, or even surreptitious practices with Terra, made up for the lack of a real lesson. Vanitas couldn’t tell if he was getting better without someone to observe. Terra said he was, but Terra would say that regardless. It wasn’t as though he made any kind of useful standard for measuring against, when he was still flagrantly going easy on Vanitas every time they sparred.  
  
The only person worth measuring himself against was Ven, and the two of them wouldn’t have been able to spar even if Ven had thought to sneak a little practice. Vanitas would win, though, if they were allowed, if it were possible. He just loathed not being able to tell by how much he would win. Training was the only chance to really measure his progress.  
  
To his surprise, when he got to the training hall at the usual time, not only Ven and the Master followed him in, but also Aqua and Terra.  
  
“What’s going on?” Ven asked. “This is the right time, isn’t it?”  
  
The Master nodded. “As an experiment, I will be organizing this morning’s practice, as well as others in the future, for all four of you together. You are now advanced enough to get some learning out of it, I believe.”  
  
Warming up was a lesson all on its own. Vanitas found himself sharing a wide-eyed look with Ven as the older students used combinations for their beginning footwork that the two of them were only just learning, running easily double-speed through the steps that Vanitas had to concentrate on and Ven could only manage at all at half speed. It wasn’t just being allowed to use their Keyblades that showed they were more advanced.  
  
One day, Vanitas was going to be able to do that. One day soon. If Terra could manage it, then Vanitas, lighter and quicker as he was, could too, and with half the work at most. It was just a matter of practice and will.  
  
He was set to drill with Terra. There didn’t seem to be much point to the exercise: what was a stretch for Vanitas was clearly no trouble at all for Terra, not worth drilling in. He said as much, in an undertone, while the Master was busy monitoring Ven and Aqua.  
  
“It’s all practice,” said Terra. “It’s good for you to work with someone new.”  
  
“And what’s good for you, then? Or is this just a favor to me?”  
  
“The same. And it’s a drill; it doesn’t have to be very interesting.”  
  
Vanitas was finding it all too interesting. There seemed to be no point at all in trying for high strikes, the way he was supposed to be doing, when he couldn’t reach the right place to land one. “Stop being so tall!” he snapped, as he leaned up into what he knew was the wrong position just to get his shoddy practice sword into the right general area.  
  
“Don’t concern yourself with placing the strike on Terra’s body,” said the Master, coming up behind him. He managed to control his start, but only barely. “Move in the way that is right for you, and let the strike land where it will.”  
  
“But, Master, the block –”  
  
“Choosing the correct block is Terra’s task, not yours. There is no need to do your opponent’s work for him.”  
  
That made sense, at least. “Yes, Master.” Vanitas returned to the drill with more enthusiasm. If Terra didn’t get enough practice with the high block, that was Terra’s problem. The Master had said that Vanitas wasn’t to worry about it.  
  
It seemed that the students who weren’t a danger to themselves and others were in the habit of sparring at the end of the lesson. The Master told Vanitas and Ven to stay and watch, but Vanitas, at least, needed no urging. It was a rare chance to see two Keyblade warriors fight who were anything like equally matched. No matter how he disliked admitting it, he knew that when he sparred with Terra it wasn’t a real match, not one that he could really win if Terra didn’t let him.  
  
It was a sight to see. He’d watched them at practice before, but never from this close up. He could also tell that he knew more now than he had a month before: he could see what they were doing now, really see and understand what he saw.  
  
The lesson couldn’t have been as hard for them as for him, but they were showing the fatigue anyway, just a little, in blocks that were slower to snap into place and attacks that went too far out of line if they didn’t connect.  
  
To Vanitas, it looked more like a dance than a match. Maybe it was the whole lesson past that kept them going slower, or maybe they were showing off, but there was a pattern to it: Terra moved in for a strike, Aqua either tumbled out of the way or countered him with her own Keyblade, then she came back and he blocked (often) or dodged (seldom), and then it began over again as he switched to some new angle or technique.  
  
Eventually, Aqua broke the pattern: instead of tumbling back the way Vanitas – and, clearly, Terra – expected her to, she rolled forward, practically under Terra’s feet. He stumbled, surprised or trying to avoid stepping on her, and by the time he had recovered it was too late, and she toppled him neatly to the floor. It would have taken far less time with magic in the mix, Vanitas thought.  
  
“Well?” she said, standing triumphant. “Do you give up?”  
  
“I yield,” Terra said easily, holding up an arm. How he expected her to pull him up off the floor, Vanitas didn’t know.  
  
He expected nothing of the kind: when Aqua reached down to grasp his arm, Terra pulled, dropping her down onto the flagstones next to him. Vanitas would have been angry if it had been him, but Aqua just started laughing.  
  
“You’re a cheat!”  
  
“I’m not!”  
  
“What do you call that, then?”  
  
“It’s not cheating if we’re not sparring anymore.”  
  
“Who says?”  
  
“You said that! You said it _yesterday_ , after you _tripped_ me.”  
  
“That was completely different!”  
  
“Oh, it was, huh? How?”  
  
They were both laughing and slapping at each other like small children. Vanitas made a loud gagging noise in his throat. “Future Keyblade Masters are disgusting.” It was almost enough to make him glad he wasn’t one.  
  
Privately, he just wanted to leave. They were having fun, the way they’d been having fun before he or Ven had come into their lives. It felt strangely like he was intruding. Really, they were the ones making fools of themselves in the middle of the training hall. If anyone should leave, it was them. They could go be ridiculously close and affectionate somewhere else, somewhere no one had to see them.  
  
Vanitas had never been so purely grateful to the Master as when he cleared his throat audibly and said, “I don’t recall dismissing you to engage in horseplay yet.”  
  
“No, Master!”  
  
“Sorry, Master!”  
  
They scrambled to their feet. Instead of watching them, however, Vanitas looked sideways at the Master. He was smiling. Vanitas hadn’t known that the Master could smile at all, certainly not fondly, as though he didn’t mind nearly as much as he said he did. It should have made Vanitas feel warm, the way smiles were supposed to do, but it didn’t.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
They were starting to fall into a new routine, Terra thought contentedly. In the morning, they all trained together and then had their two sets of book lessons before lunch; later, in the afternoon, the Master gave each of them a shorter private lesson while the rest studied or trained on their own. It meant a little less official training time, but there was no reason not to do a little more on their own, just for fun. Everyone was getting better, the Unversed were being slowly reduced in number, they could go farther from the castle without being attacked, and all seemed right with the world.  
  
Ven and Vanitas had just learned jumping strikes. Unsurprisingly, this meant practicing on Terra a lot. According to Vanitas, “That was what he deserved for being so tall all the time.” Terra didn’t mind; he could use more practice on his high blocks. They were in the middle of a drill when Vanitas came down at just the wrong angle, Terra blocked with more force than he’d meant to, and Vanitas’s wooden practice sword broke with a sudden _crack!_  
  
Everyone froze. It sounded like a bone breaking. When they saw it was just the sword, they relaxed again and ceased to be attentive statues. Master Eraqus turned to the side door where training supplies were kept, including wooden swords. It was just an accident, nothing that hadn’t happened before.  
  
“Put the pieces aside, and mind the splinters,” said Master Eraqus calmly.  
  
Terra saw the shadow pass over Vanitas’s face, then come and roost there, but he didn’t catch until too late that it was something besides annoyance at the interruption. He was as surprised as anyone when, rather than bending to pick up the broken half-blade, Vanitas shouted in rage and flung the intact handle to the floor to join it.  
  
“I’ve had enough!” he yelled at the room at large.  
  
“Vanitas, what –” Aqua began to speak, but he kept yelling right over her.  
  
“I put up with it until now, I did my time, but that’s over, and I’m never picking up another one of those stupid – cold – dead – _things_!”  
  
The Master frowned, clearly not impressed by this tantrum. “You will use a practice sword until such time as I judge you ready to graduate to full use of a Keyblade. It is not a toy.”  
  
“No, it’s not! It’s a _weapon_. How am I supposed to learn how to use a weapon if all you’ll let me touch is a toy?”  
  
“How am I supposed to trust you with a weapon if you are not capable of controlling yourself with a toy?”  
  
“It’s too late for that, isn’t it?” With a flash, Vanitas’s Keyblade was in his hand. “What I _have_ is the weapon. The least you could do is let me _use_ it!”  
  
He was so furious that the light around him seemed to dim the way Terra hadn’t seen it do since before Vanitas had been truly separate from Ven. Automatically, Terra brought his Keyblade up into a guard position. If Vanitas really lost control, he wanted to be prepared.  
  
Vanitas took it the wrong way, though. “You see? As soon as I have a real weapon in my hand, it’s all back to the beginning again, isn’t it? You might as well just come out and say that I’m not allowed to be a wielder of the Keyblade where anyone else can see.”  
  
He looked strangely, wildly miserable, like he might go on and on saying things Terra didn’t understand, but fortunately Master Eraqus interrupted him before he could say any more. “You are certainly not allowed to continue training while displaying this behavior. Go to your room until you have calmed down and are ready to apologize to your fellow students for disturbing their lesson.”  
  
“My fellow –” Vanitas began, but he shut his mouth with a snap, though it had no effect on his glare, and said in the sulkiest possible voice that wasn’t outright mutinous, “Yes, Master.” Keyblade still in hand, he turned and started for the door, footsteps on the bare right side of stomping.  
  
Terra wondered if he was seeing things, or if Vanitas’s face really did look as twisted and unhappy as he thought it did. On an impulse, he said, “I’ll make sure he goes. Please, Master?” Master Eraqus nodded. Vanitas being sent to his room left Terra without a partner, anyway, so it wasn’t as though he was putting anyone else out. With a quick bow, Terra followed Vanitas from the training hall.  
  
It would have been easier to think of something to say if Vanitas hadn’t been hurrying away from him, head down. He had to hurry himself just to catch up. “Hey.”  
  
“Go away,” Vanitas snarled, but his voice was thick with something other than anger.  
  
“What happened back there? Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine. What kind of question is that? Why wouldn’t I be fine?”  
  
There was really no tactful way to say it. “You were…there was darkness around you, a little bit.”  
  
“Oh.” Vanitas laughed bitterly. “Oh, well, great. That’s all I needed to make my point, right? Totally in control and safe as an innocent dormouse, that’s me.” Terra was starting to really worry – they still didn’t know, not for sure, if Vanitas was going to be okay, and no matter how much Terra hoped that he would know somehow if something was seriously wrong, that was just hoping – but Vanitas waved him off when he tried to get a closer look at him. “There’s nothing wrong with me. That’s just the kind of thing that happens sometimes.”  
  
Terra thought he was being unacceptably casual about the situation. “And you just let the darkness do what it wants like that?”  
  
“What should I do, then?”  
  
He always seemed to fail the challenges in Vanitas’s eyes, but he couldn’t help trying anyway. “You have to push it away. Give it no quarter in your heart.” He could hear Master Eraqus telling him the same. That should mean it was good advice.  
  
As usual, Vanitas didn’t seem to agree. “Quarter? It _is_ my heart, or have you forgotten already? There’s nothing to push it away with, if I even wanted to.”  
  
“You don’t want to?” That didn’t make sense to Terra. There was nothing he could think of wanting more than to finally drive the darkness out of his heart. It wasn’t good for anything. There was no reason not to want it gone.  
  
Vanitas scowled at him like he was missing something obvious but vital. “The darkness is what I’m made of. I don’t care if you don’t like it, but it’s _me_ , and I’m not turning on it just because your Master would like it better if I didn’t exist!”  
  
“That wasn’t – I didn’t – He doesn’t think that, Vanitas!”  
  
“Sure. Keep telling yourself that.” There was so much bitterness in Vanitas’s voice that Terra couldn’t find any words to say, nor could he stop himself from reaching out and clasping Vanitas by the shoulder.  
  
“I wouldn’t,” he said awkwardly. He hadn’t thought it needed to be said. “If you didn’t exist, I wouldn’t like it.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re dumb,” said Vanitas, but one corner of his mouth tilted up into almost a smile, so it was okay.

* * *

 

  
  
“Vanitas? Vanitas, come on, this isn’t funny.”  
  
It wasn’t meant to be, but it was like Aqua to not tell the difference between a joke and a sincere request. She had no sense of humor. She also had no sense of just how annoying it was when she kept knocking on the door over and over and over again. If Vanitas hadn’t had a headache before, he would have by now.  
  
Clearly, she wasn’t going to give up and go away if he waited long enough. Vanitas squirmed out from under his bed, trying not to move his head more than he could help, and went to the door. He swung it open the smallest degree he could manage and still see through it. The lights in the hall were unpleasantly bright. So was the expression on Aqua’s face. He glared at both with equal resentment.  
  
“What part of ‘I’m going to my room, leave me alone’ didn’t you understand the first time?” he demanded.  
  
She frowned at him as though he were the one making a nuisance of himself. “It’s dinnertime, and you didn’t come down. I was worried about you.”  
  
“Well, there’s clearly nothing to worry about, so go away!” He tried to slam the door as punctuation but Aqua, vexingly, forestalled him with a shoe wedged in the gap. Her shoes were solid things, too; slamming the door on her foot wouldn’t teach her much of a lesson.  
  
“It doesn’t look like it,” she said. “It looks like you’re sitting in your room instead of coming to dinner. You never miss meals!”  
  
“I’m not hungry.” It was only a half-truth: he was distracted by the pulse pounding in his temples from really noticing how hungry he was, but once it went away he was going to be ravenous. Still, he had enough food hidden in his room to make a meal of if he wanted it, and even if he hadn’t, going hungry for not even a single meal, just for long enough that everyone else would be scattered about the castle when he went down to make himself something, was far better than being subjected to the whole laughing, cheerful, obnoxious crowd.  
  
“Are you sure? Do you feel sick?” That was closer to the mark, but still a ways off – not that Vanitas particularly wanted her to guess everything he was thinking and feeling, but if she did he wouldn’t have to tell her, and then she might go away.  
  
He knew it was wishful thinking, but he could dream.  
  
“I’m not sick. I’m just not hungry. Go away.”  
  
She wasn’t very good at looking entreating, but she tried anyway. “Come on, tell me what’s wrong.”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he realized they were the wrong ones. He should have said that there was nothing to tell, because nothing was wrong. He should have said that he was just tired.  
  
That would even have been the truth; the trouble with having smuggled enough ingredients onto the shopping list to try out a more complicated recipe was that, he had discovered, complicated recipes took a long time to make and longer yet to clean up after. The result hadn’t even been worth it by any measurement, and certainly not compared with the loss of sleep. He was getting sick of doing all his cooking in the night. No one had caught him yet, though they had to be wondering where the extra food was coming from, since he couldn’t possibly eat it all before it spoiled, but it might be worth being caught to be less tired all the next day.  
  
He could have told Aqua that, if he had been in a mood to tell her anything. He wasn’t. He particularly didn’t feel like sharing any of his secrets with her. She didn’t deserve them: they were his. Only she wouldn’t leave him alone with them.  
  
Telling her he didn’t want to talk, of course, had the opposite of the desired effect. She gave him a look that said without needing words that she knew what was best for him, if he would only listen, and said, “Vanitas, you have to talk about what’s upsetting you. It’s not good for you to just bottle it up.”  
  
Of all the ridiculous things she could possibly have said, that one had to take the prize for most hypocritical. “Look who’s talking!”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“It means I’m the only one around here who _doesn’t_ bottle everything up, and you don’t seem to like it very much any time you aren’t trying to drag your fingers through my mind for my own good!” That wasn’t as cutting as it had been in his head, but it was too late to take the words back.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. She probably really didn’t know. If there was one thing in copious supply around the castle, it was self-delusion. They should really thank Vanitas for calling these things to their attention.  
  
“I mean if I’m not in a good mood and you can tell, you nag at me for sulking, like I should be plastering a smile on my face even when I don’t want to. What’s upsetting me right now is that you _won’t leave me alone_. It’s not bottled up at all. Now go away!”  
  
She continued to not go. “You’ve been unhappy all day. Won’t you tell me why? It feels better if you talk about it.”  
  
This was blatantly false. Vanitas wasn’t going to feel better if he talked about staying up too late cooking and being tired all day because of it, or about sensing the progression of a slow headache creeping on since he’d woken up, or about chafing at the frustration of having to use a dead wooden sword thing if he wanted to be allowed lessons at all, or about sitting through yet another lecture on preserving the light from the greedy fingers of the darkness, or about finding _people_ with their endless chatter anywhere he thought he could have a little peace and quiet, or about –  
  
Or about the package. He didn’t want to think about it, and he certainly didn’t want to tell Aqua about it. It was her package, after all, full of her no-reason-just-because presents from her parents. She was the last person he wanted to talk to about that. She was certainly the last person whose doomed attempts at being _understanding_ he wanted to deal with.  
  
He might have talked to Ven about it: Ven was him, and if he didn’t understand he should be made to, so that he would know how much he was the lucky one to be unable to remember anything before the castle. But Ven had been so full of energy that sitting him down for a talk would have been impossible. He might even, if Aqua hadn’t been the one at the door, talked to Terra. He could be at least as annoying, but he might have managed to understand without having it all spelled painfully out. Terra didn’t get random packages from random relatives. Terra, he’d told Vanitas once when they’d been not-quite-shouting at each other, hadn’t had anyone to care when Master Eraqus had taken him in. He would have understood what it felt like to be reminded that _other_ people had parents who sent them gifts, that he was the one who wasn’t normal.  
  
He wouldn’t have talked to either of them right now, though, not if they were the ones banging on his door and pestering him when all he wanted was to be left alone.  
  
“I’m unhappy because you keep bothering me, that’s why!” he snapped. “I don’t want to talk about it, because I don’t want to talk about anything, which is why I’m in my room not talking to people! You may, just possibly, be able to uncover a pattern here! I’m not hungry and I don’t want to deal with you! Go. Away.”  
  
“Vanitas –”  
  
“No!” He tried to close the door again. This time Aqua let him, though she looked reprovingly at him for as long as she could.  
  
“I’m here, when you want to talk!” she yelled through the door.  
  
“Then I have a very good reason to never come out there again!” he yelled back. He almost meant it.  
  
His nest under the bed was dark and comfortably warm, and as a bonus it contained absolutely no one who wanted to talk about his feelings or otherwise stop him from seething in resentment if he wanted to.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
It was hard to find a way of apologizing to somebody who refused to talk to her. Aqua considered the problem seriously. Vanitas was disturbingly good at vanishing as soon as she got close enough to talk to him, and running after him shouting was no way to apologize. Besides, that would make her look stupid, and then he would laugh.  
  
She was going to have to hurry, or she wouldn’t think of a way before she stopped feeling sorry at all. He was just acting so childish! She couldn’t regret upsetting him the way she should if this was how he was going to behave, particularly when she was just trying to say that she was sorry and would try harder not to bother him when he didn’t want her to.  
  
It was so hard to tell when he didn’t want her to bother him, she thought resentfully. He never admitted to wanting someone around, or to wanting anything at all, really. And he always looked unhappy, at least when he was paying attention. She couldn’t tell half the time if he wanted to be bothered or left alone. Sometimes he would say things that Aqua was pretty sure were just to get on her nerves and make her talk to him, but he never just started a conversation like a normal person.  
  
She wasn’t being strictly fair, she knew. Vanitas did talk normally sometimes, usually about lessons or to ask a question, more than he used to certainly. But she couldn’t remember any of those times right now, not nearly as clearly as she could remember all the times he’d insulted her or her friends, or said something was stupid when it wasn’t, and then started talking a mile a minute as soon as she got annoyed enough to snap back at him. It was a vexing habit.  
  
And now he was actively hiding from her rather than let her apologize. She wanted to scream.  
  
It was her specifically he was hiding from, too: when she asked him, Terra said, “I talked to him this morning. Why, what’s wrong?”  
  
“I think he’s avoiding me,” she admitted.  
  
“Why would he do that?”  
  
“Well, we kind of fought, and it was my fault, but now he won’t let me talk to him!” said Aqua.  
  
Terra didn’t have any advice, unfortunately, besides cornering Vanitas in his room or somewhere else he would have to listen. Aqua rejected that strategy out of hand. The whole problem had come about because she’d cornered him in his room when he hadn’t wanted to be cornered. She wasn’t going to be able to fix it by doing the exact same thing.  
  
The only other good places to talk to him where he couldn’t run off were at training or meals, and she couldn’t at either of those. That would mean talking not only to Vanitas, but to Ven and Terra and the _Master_ as well. It was simply too embarrassing to contemplate.  
  
Aside from those few places, Vanitas could be anywhere, at any time, and even if she managed to find him he would just run off again. Hide and seek was lovely as a game to play in this castle, but as a serious activity it got frustrating fast. She’d been respecting Vanitas’s privacy all this time (mostly), so she didn’t even know where he was most likely to be.  
  
At this point in her fretting, a thought occurred to her. There was one place she was almost positive that Vanitas went quite often. She could still be mistaken, and she didn’t know exactly when, but she could guess, and in any case she didn’t have any better ideas.  
  
Accordingly, after dinner that night Aqua abandoned her book and went back down to the kitchen, propitiatory gift in hand. She was only almost positive that it would work, too, but if she was wrong, she could easily put it right without anyone knowing.  
  
Sure enough, the light was on, and Vanitas was there, rummaging in one of the cupboards used for storing pots and pans.  
  
She waited until he was no longer in danger of cracking his head if he started before she spoke. “Vanitas?”  
  
He jumped, and the pans under his hands rattled. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, then corrected herself. “To apologize.” When he didn’t say anything, she lifted her chin and said what she’d come to say. “I’m sorry for bothering you the other day. It was rude of me.”  
  
“Yes, it was,” he agreed.  
  
She didn’t feel very sorry at all just at the moment. “So, do you accept my apology?”  
  
“Do I get a choice?”  
  
“That was a question, wasn’t it?” Everything always had to be such a big production with him. Aqua wished she didn’t have to explain her motives every time she did anything. It got tiring.  
  
“Well, fine, I accept your apology or whatever. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”  
  
She could also live without his complete disdain for politeness, or his ability to be rude while concealing his real meaning, in defiance of all logic. She decided to make the rest quick and then leave, before he accused her of doing the same thing she’d just apologized for. “I got you something.” She held out the gift. It wasn’t much of one, considering, but she hadn’t had much time.  
  
From the speed with which he snatched it from her hands, she’d guessed exactly right. Vanitas’s eyes were practically glowing with delight. “Perfect… What made you think I wanted one?” The glow left as he looked up at her suspiciously.  
  
Aqua shrugged. “Master Eraqus didn’t know what a spring-form pan was, so when one turned up on the shopping list he asked me if I’d put it there.”  
  
“What did you tell him?” The wariness was another thing Aqua was tired of seeing, but not in the same way she was tired of the rudeness. That annoyed her; this just made her wish that she could fix it, that there were such a thing as solder for hearts.  
  
“I told him it was for a surprise,” she said. “He was probably expecting me to use it to make a surprise, but I think it’s a pretty good surprise on its own. Don’t you agree?”  
  
“What makes you think I’m the one who wanted one?”  
  
The fact that he hadn’t taken his hands off it was a solid hint, but one that Aqua declined to mention. “Well, it wasn’t the Master, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t Terra, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t Ven. So that left you. …What is a spring-form pan for, anyway?”  
  
She’d missed seeing that grin. “ _Cake_.”  
  
“Can I help?”  
  
“…If you promise not to tell anyone,” said Vanitas.  
  
She promised readily. It wasn’t a secret that could possibly be harmful to anyone. In fact, she doubted that it was much of a secret at all, considering how few people in the castle could possibly be responsible for the mysterious appearance of cake. But if Vanitas felt better acting like it was a secret, going along with it was the least she could do.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Vanitas stared at his hand without really seeing it.  
  
That wasn’t supposed to happen. Things were better now. _He_ was better now. He was supposed to have gotten past this. He was supposed to be safe ( _but he was never safe_ ). Things weren’t supposed to just happen outside his control anymore the way they had before.  
  
There hadn’t been anything to be afraid of, nothing but a spar with Terra while the Master watched to see how he was progressing. He’d sparred with Terra dozens of times by now, and he’d never gotten hurt. The Master had watched him at drills dozens of times, and he’d never gotten in trouble. There hadn’t been any reason for him to be nervous.  
  
There hadn’t been any reason for the sudden blaze of dark fire that had burst from his hand.  
  
At least he hadn’t hit anyone. He hadn’t been aiming – how could he, when he hadn’t been expecting anything to happen? – and the fireball had dissipated harmlessly in the air. But everyone had seen it.  
  
He couldn’t look up. He didn’t want to see the Master’s face, how surprised he wouldn’t be. He didn’t want to see _Terra’s_ face. He and Aqua and Ven would be surprised. Vanitas thought they would, anyway. He didn’t know what he would do if they weren’t.  
  
It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. This was what he got for going soft, for letting people in. He’d tried so hard not to, but he _cared_. And now that he cared, it was going to hurt when they threw him out. If he’d known that this was going to be his last morning in the castle, he would have – done something, he couldn’t think what, something that would ensure that they remembered him no matter what.  
  
Maybe they would forgive him, if he explained that he hadn’t meant it. He laughed inside his head at his own wishful thinking. It didn’t matter whether they believed him or not. If he was uncontrollable, he would have to go, before he hurt any of the real students. Excuses didn’t change anything.  
  
He wasn’t going to cower, he resolved. He wasn’t a child. He was too strong to let this break him.  
  
His head felt heavy as he raised his eyes at last in the echoing silence to meet Terra’s. They were both still frozen in their guard positions, halfway into a clash that Vanitas had been going to lose but that had left Terra’s side open for a magical strike. Vanitas had thought that, had seen how he could have won, really won, not just been allowed to win, if only he had been able to use magic, and the darkness had come without being called.  
  
Terra wasn’t scared. Vanitas didn’t know how to feel about that. He should have been scared; if that had been a real attack, he would have taken it full in the side, a blast of darkness that clung while it burned. He should be turning the fake blow into a real one while Vanitas was distracted. Instead, he lowered his Keyblade, coming out of guard as though the danger were less, not more, than it had been a minute before.  
  
The clatter as Vanitas dropped his practice sword echoed hollow in his ears. Of all the times to be using a useless practice sword, this had to be the most ironic. They’d thought he was safe without a Keyblade in his hand.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
Terra’s voice took a moment to register; the words made too little sense. He was the one Vanitas had almost set alight. He shouldn’t be the one asking if _anyone_ was okay, let alone Vanitas.  
  
“I –” He wanted to say that he was fine, but between his brain and his lips something went awry. “I didn’t mean to.” He shut his mouth sharply on the rest of what he wanted to say. There was no point to apologizing if no one was going to believe that he meant it. After all, he wouldn’t have done something like that if he hadn’t wanted it to happen. Darkness responded to the heart. That much of the lectures was true. Maybe, it turned out, more had been true than Vanitas had wanted to believe.  
  
“I know.” More words that made no sense: how could Terra know? He didn’t, couldn’t, know for sure that Vanitas hadn’t been waiting for a chance all this time.  
  
He hadn’t even been angry. That was the worst part. He hadn’t felt angry, or afraid, or anything unpleasant. He’d just wanted to show off a little while the Master was watching. He couldn’t say he’d lost his temper, because he hadn’t, and everyone could see that. Temper might have been excusable. This couldn’t be.  
  
“Vanitas! Terra!” Aqua left her place on the sidelines at a run. It was almost gratifying to see the fear in her eyes. At least someone knew how much trouble he was ( **in** ).  
  
Ven followed her. He didn’t look afraid, just worried, and he looked to Vanitas first. “What happened?”  
  
“I don’t know,” he said honestly.  
  
They weren’t the ones that mattered, though they did matter more than he wanted to think ( _weak, weak and foolish, going to pay for it now_ ). It was the Master Vanitas turned to as he stepped down off the dais. The Master was the one who was in charge here, the one who could decide that his charity was clearly being wasted, the one who might have been right all along.  
  
He was stern, as he always was when forced to address Vanitas directly outside of simple instruction, but to Vanitas’s confusion, he wasn’t angry. “Vanitas. Can you explain this?”  
  
The truth wasn’t much good to him, but a lie would be worse. There was no lie that could explain it away. So he said, “No, Master.”  
  
“You can’t explain your actions?”  
  
“No, Master. It just…happened.” He wasn’t going to plead that he hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, hadn’t called on the darkness deliberately at all. That was too ridiculous a statement for even him to believe, and he knew that it was true.  
  
“This is the consequence of yielding to the darkness. Where it is not completely suppressed, it will leak forth without being summoned. Your body then becomes nothing more than a conduit for the darkness. Do you understand?”  
  
What Vanitas understood was that he was somehow, miraculously, not being punished or driven out. Master Eraqus actually seemed to believe that it had been only an accident. “I – Yes, Master. I understand.”  
  
“Good. It is your task to drive the darkness back within yourself so that such a thing does not happen again. For now, the lesson is over.”  
  
He might not like – or, he whispered to himself, in all honesty really understand – the advice, but unhelpful advice was far better than what he had expected to get from the Master. He picked up his practice sword. If he wasn’t being kicked out of the castle, he would need it in the afternoon.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Eraqus was finding it more difficult by the day to be certain of the rightness of his actions with regard to Vanitas. The boy was a indubitably a problem, prone to tantrums and sulks by turns. It seemed to Eraqus that he had begun behaving worse as he had settled in, vexingly, though he hoped that recently there had been a turn for the better. Such mundane difficulties, however, only time and reasonable discipline would solve, but they _would_ solve them, on that he could rely.  
  
The true difficulty existed rather in the problems Vanitas presented without any apparent volition on his part. Such concerns were the more potent for being innate, a matter of nature, which could not be altered, rather than choice, which was always subject to change. After so long a period of observation, Eraqus was at least satisfied that the Unversed were no longer bound to Vanitas in any meaningful way. He demonstrated none of the signs that had indicated the connection, nor had the monsters close to the castle increased in number as they had done previously. So much was certain.  
  
On the other hand, the darkness he sensed in Vanitas when he set himself to searching for it showed no indication whatsoever of abating. His heart remained as pitch-black in character as it could possibly have been immediately after the severing. That was a decidedly bad sign, and a dangerous one as well.  
  
He had continued to allow Vanitas the freedom of the castle, telling himself that the castle had survived such residents before, but he wondered if that was true. Even Xehanort, whatever he might have become in the interval, had once had a light to rival or indeed surpass his darkness. Vanitas had no such light. The heart of the castle had not harmed him in their brief period of close contact, nor he it, but Eraqus found, on revisiting his own learning, that he did not know whether that should wholly satisfy him. It meant at least that Vanitas had not at the time held any ill intent, but what more than that, he could not say.  
  
Lack of ill intent at one point could not be taken as surety for the future. If Vanitas should be caught by temptation, with all the power for destruction available so near, then allowing him to remain in so critical a location might prove disastrous.  
  
Yet Eraqus had not sent him away. More, when he considered potential solutions, he could not bring himself to give it the weight it perhaps deserved. It would solve the difficulty of Vanitas’s dark power and its proximity to the vulnerable heart of the castle without any further action, and still he did not wish to seriously consider it. Whatever his nature might be, the boy had not done anything so dire as to warrant being sent from the only home he possessed with no custodian to care for his wellbeing.  
  
That road led back to Xehanort, and that in the best case. Eraqus knew too well what might become of a child, however powerful, alone in a strange world. He was, for the moment, the closest thing to a guardian that Vanitas had, and he would not be remiss in the duty he owed thereby. He was also the only Master currently taking apprentices.  
  
The question was, how far did he mean to teach Vanitas? Only a Master could make a Master, but there might be found teachers of sword and magic, capable of instructing a wielder of the Keyblade in the things he needed to know for his survival. Eraqus did not wish to make a promise he would not keep, and if he took Vanitas as his full student, he was promising at least the possibility of attaining Mastery. But to create a Master of the darkness, deliberately and knowing what it was he did…He was not sure he ought even to consider it.  
  
Finding Vanitas another teacher would mean sending him away, in a sense at least, though he would be fully provided for and keep the welcome of the castle for as long at least as his apprenticeship lasted. All the same, Eraqus wondered doubtfully what the other children would think of that – let alone what Vanitas would think. They had all three grown deeply attached to him, which might in itself be a reason to seek a place for him elsewhere. It was no pleasant experience to know that a person one had cared for belonged now to the darkness; he would spare them that, if it was at all in his power. It might be better to miss Vanitas now than to be betrayed by him later.  
  
If he could only be sure one way or the other, he thought, feeling rather like his mind was running in circles similar to the ones his feet made on the spiral stair. If he knew that Vanitas would go to the dark sooner or later regardless, he would feel less reluctant to contrive for him a place outside the castle. If, on the other hand, he knew that even this complete darkness could be overcome, he would have less compunction about keeping him on as a student.  
  
It was the usual hour when he began to prepare dinner, but when he descended the stair, he discovered that there was already a great clanging of pans and echoing of many voices from the kitchen. Curious, he approached the door.  
  
They were all in there, the four of them, but unlike other such occasions, no culinary disaster appeared to be on the verge of descending, staved off only by a great deal of frantic effort. Rather, the bustle seemed to be of the nature of a four-parted machine, most of which was talking loudly as an extension of its function.  
  
Aqua was looking rather dubiously at a dressed chicken, saying, “Are you sure it’s supposed to be this color?” Ventus had a knife in one hand and a potato in the other, and he was saying, “How many more? This is boring.” Terra was chopping vegetables nearby, hardly looking at what he was doing, but saying, “The size of my thumb or yours?” And flitting from stovetop to counter to cupboards, throwing words around as he went, “It’s one of the spices I think – someone hold this – keep peeling until you’re done, you’re the one who wanted to help – is the stove ready? – my thumb, make them smaller,” was Vanitas.  
  
Eraqus avoided disturbing them for a moment. This was no Vanitas he had ever seen. All sulkiness was gone; he was positively smiling. If he had not known, he would not have been able to guess at the darkness beneath his skin.  
  
Unfortunately, it did not last; Ventus noticed him first and jumped down from his stool. “Master Eraqus!”  
  
There reappeared the look of sulky defiance with which Eraqus was familiar, accompanied by the equally familiar silence. He suspected for the first time that both were reserved for him alone, rather than the world at large.  
  
It was clearly up to Eraqus to break the silence. “And what is going on here?”  
  
“We’re making dinner,” said Terra.  
  
“So I see. It seems to be going well.” It in fact seemed to be going phenomenally well, considering the number of different dishes in progress. Eraqus had believed that his students had largely given up on such complicated cooking after one catastrophic failure too many coupled with their personal lack of interest in anything more elaborate than the occasional batch of cookies. “To whom do I owe my gratitude?”  
  
“Vanitas did it,” Aqua said. She had a smear of something on her face. “He’s really good!”  
  
“It’s not that hard,” said Vanitas dismissively. “You just don’t know what you’re doing – put that in already and stop staring at it.”  
  
“I suppose this explains the increased length of the grocery lists of late?” He had wondered where it was all going, but when food he had had nothing to do with had duly appeared, he had assumed that someone was taking up cookery as a hobby. He had been right, it appeared, though he had never suspected Vanitas, of all people.  
  
Vanitas glanced shiftily away. “I didn’t waste any of it.”  
  
“I have no doubt.” Eraqus judged that there was no need for him in the kitchen at the moment, and just as well, too. “Have a care of the oven. And, Vanitas? In future, less subterfuge might be appropriate.”  
  
He took his leave. There was much for him to think on.  
  
The darkness did not create. It was a force only for destruction, a powerful and thus seductive one to be sure, but no more than that. The dark heart was corrupt, incapable of any true act of making, longing only to damage whatever it touched. It should not have been possible for Vanitas to turn his mind willingly to benign, even beneficent creation, yet he had. There was more to the boy, perhaps, than Eraqus had thought.  
  
Only time would tell for sure, but Eraqus was willing to allot more of it now to discovering what Vanitas’s potential truly was. It seemed that he had missed more than a little.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Vanitas rapped on the door quickly, before he could change his mind. He didn’t want to be here, doing this, but when it came right down to it, he didn’t have much choice. He could admit that he was lost now, in front of just one person, or he could admit it tomorrow in front of the Master and all. As long as he knew what he was doing by the time of the lesson, he hadn’t failed. It was clearly better to get it over with.  
  
Not all of him agreed. He hated having to swallow his pride and confess that there was something he couldn’t do on his own. _Ven_ probably wasn’t having any trouble, so he shouldn’t be either. He had to be better.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
He wasn’t going to get better by staring uncomprehendingly at the same page of the same book for another hour or five, he reminded himself. He wasn’t giving up; he was using a different resource. A better resource, one that made far more sense and didn’t need a dictionary to understand.  
  
“Aqua?” he said over the voice in his head still insisting that this was a laughably bad idea. “It’s me. Are you busy?” He quite honestly couldn’t decide whether he wanted her to answer in the affirmative or not. If she did, he could go away – but that would just mean having to ask her again, or try someone else, or give up for real.  
  
“No, come right in!”  
  
She was making one of her little metal projects. It didn’t look like anything in particular yet, just glittering rings of metal scattered all across the worktable under the window. Vanitas let himself be temporarily distracted from his purpose. “What’re you working on?”  
  
“It’s going to be a necklace.” Aqua held up what was currently in her hands for inspection: a chain of rings with the start of something hanging off of them. “I want to make a setting for some sea glass. I’m not sure yet if it’s going to work, though.”  
  
Vanitas muttered something noncommittal. Other people’s jewelry, even in the more interesting half-finished state of Aqua’s project, was nothing like interesting enough to really take his mind off of his problem. He tried to think of a way to broach the subject that didn’t make him sound completely dense and hopeless.  
  
As usual, Aqua beat him to it. “What’s up?” she asked. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”  
  
“…You could say that.” For lack of anything better to say, he thrust the deeply unhelpful book at her. “It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
The rings clinked as she put her project down on the table. “What doesn’t?”  
  
“Everything?” he said helplessly. He’d reread the chapter a dozen times at least, and every time it felt like he knew less than the time before.  
  
“Show me,” said Aqua, reaching for the book.  
  
Vanitas flipped it open to the correct chapter, if ‘correct’ was an accurate word to describe any part of the horrible thing. “He doesn’t say anything real, just rambles on and on forever, and none of it makes sense. I can’t even tell what I’m supposed to be learning anymore!”  
  
“It is pretty thick, isn’t it?” Aqua said. “But you’re in luck! I think I remember this part from when Terra and I learned it.”  
  
“So what does it say?” he said, impatient. He wanted nothing more than to get this over with and go do something, anything else. Scrubbing the floors would be more amusing than trying to make head or tail of the close-written sludge that passed for a book of magical instruction.  
  
“Well, it’s talking about the different elemental natures, how that comes out in nature and objects versus how it comes out in magic itself.”  
  
He thought back over what he had managed to parse of the chapter. “Is that what ‘the variance of alchemical composition’ was supposed to be about?” He hadn’t been able to figure out what that was supposed to mean. He’d certainly never seen those phrases before.  
  
“Yeah, this book uses a lot of kind of obscure terminology. But if you read it from the start, he explains most of it in the first few chapters, and it builds up smoothly.”  
  
Vanitas sometimes suspected Aqua of being a completely alien being. “Why would I do _that_?” Struggling through one chapter of this was as much as, if not more than, he could stand.  
  
She colored. “That’s what I did when I read it. It’s not really all that bad!” He didn’t believe her, and his face showed it. She went on, “Anyway, the important thing is that this author talks about alchemy a lot, but what he really means is normal elements, at least in this chapter. Just ignore him if he starts talking about the alchemical nature of might and clarity and things like that; those aren’t in magic anywhere.”  
  
“Then why does he talk about them?” he felt justified in asking.  
  
“It’s mostly a text on alchemical theory of object transmutation,” said Aqua with a shrug. Vanitas stared at her, waiting for words that made sense. “…Turning things into other things. But this one chapter talks about magic a lot, and it’s really helpful, I think, for keeping your spells sorted out!”  
  
Taking the book back, he sat cross-legged on the floor and took another run at the chapter. It wasn’t so bad, really, with Aqua there to ask what the strange and twisted phrases meant. She was much better than a dictionary, because the dictionaries in the library didn’t know which possible meaning of a word was the best, or if there was a special phrase he should know on its own that changed the meanings. He got on much faster, which was to say at all, with her available. She didn’t seem to mind, either. The quiet clinking as she went back to work didn’t intrude into the front of Vanitas’s thoughts. It was just there, peaceful background noise that made it easier rather than harder to concentrate.

* * *

 

Ven made it from the hall window to the empty bedroom almost two seconds faster than his previous best time. It was a serious accomplishment, in his opinion. Jumping extra high to reach that third branch was definitely faster overall once he got used to it, even if it wasn’t quite as much fun!  
  
That meant Vanitas was going to gloat, probably, about having been right. Ven decided to hold off on telling him until he’d found an even better shortcut that replaced one of _his_ favorite bits of showing off. Then they would be even.  
  
Unfortunately, Vanitas was sprawled precariously over one of the upper branches reading something, so he saw both the route Ven took up the tree and the dance of victory that ensued. He laughed at both. “I told you so.”  
  
Ven stuck his tongue out in reply. That definitely settled the matter. What more compelling argument could there be?  
  
He swung over the window ledge into the room beyond. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, with perfect light for working. He liked being in the sunlight, when he could; everything looked different, brighter, under the sun compared to the lamps indoors.  
  
His embroidery hoop was just where he’d left it on the desk. He grabbed it and the book he was using as a guide and brought both up onto the broad windowsill. It would have been nicer to sit in the tree, but he’d lost one needle that way already, somewhere in the three stories of leaves below, and didn’t plan on making that mistake again. At least if he dropped it on the sill there wouldn’t be much to search.  
  
“Are you actually making something, or just ruining a perfectly good piece of cloth?” Vanitas asked, hanging backward off his branch by his knees.  
  
“It’s a sampler,” Ven said. “It’s for practice.” Practice he badly needed: he couldn’t seem to get his stitch to look like the one in the book, and he wasn’t sure where he was going wrong. He tried again. It would be easier if there were more pictures, he thought. Then he could see which step he was messing up on.  
  
He kept on for a while, as his stitches got slowly less sloppy and more like the tidy ones in the book. Eventually, Vanitas finished the book he’d been reading and dropped down off the branch to get a new one. In the process, he almost, but not quite, landed on Ven’s book, and Ven swatted at him for blocking the light without looking up. Then he vanished into the dim of the room behind. With half an ear, Ven heard him rustling about in the bookcase, taking books down and then putting them back.  
  
Abruptly, the noises stopped.  
  
“Ven?” Vanitas sounded strange, thin and strained, quieter than he ever bothered to be.  
  
Ven stuck his needle in the sampler to hold it and turned round. “Yeah?”  
  
He dropped his hoop without caring where it landed and jumped down onto the floor. Vanitas was standing by the bookcase with a piece of paper in his hand, a look on his face that Ven couldn’t read but doubted that he wanted to. In the dim indoor light, he looked almost pale. “What is it?”  
  
Vanitas held out the piece of paper. “It was in between two of the books.”  
  
He took it and peered at it. It looked like a letter, the writing sprawling and hard to read. Ven glanced down at the signature, and then he knew why he hadn’t understood Vanitas’s expression. The signature was as curving and bold as the rest, but the one large word was easier to pick out: _Xehanort_.  
  
“Did you read it?” he asked.  
  
Vanitas shook his head. “I didn’t get a chance. How did _he_ get a letter _here_?” Before Ven could say anything, Vanitas answered for him. “He and the Master were both students here once. He must have left it behind.”  
  
Ven couldn’t quite drag his eyes away from the signature. There might be anything, in a letter from _him_ to Vanitas (Ven couldn’t help feeling like Vanitas had always been meant to find it, and no one else). There might be some kind of explanation for everything he’d done. “I’m reading it,” he decided.  
  
“Hey!” Vanitas made a grab for the letter, but Ven ducked out of reach. “I’m the one who found it! It’s my letter. He was –”  
  
“He was my Master too,” Ven pointed out. “I have as much right to it as you.” For Vanitas’s benefit, however, he started to read aloud, stumbling a bit over the unfamiliar shapes of the letters. If he took it slowly it was actually quite legible. He read:  
  
 _To Whom It May Concern:_  
  
 _You are, I presume, a student like myself, bound to the Master of this castle until such time as he judges you fit to ascend as Master yourself. From beyond the gates of time, I greet you, fellow traveler on the road to Mastery. Chosen of the Keyblade, may your fortune be no less than your deserts._  
  
 _I write this letter on the point of my departure from the life of a student, to advise and perhaps have some small influence on future generations. What I have learned through experience I leave in your hands as a gift in trust that the test shall find them capable._  
  
 _First, take nothing for granted, pass over nothing as beneath your notice. There are secrets to be uncovered everywhere. Yes, even here. I could tell you something of those I have uncovered, but you will do better to seek for yourself. And who knows? Perhaps you will discover something even I have missed. Look where you have been forbidden, but more, look at what has not even been mentioned. There do the true secrets dwell._  
  
 _Second, fear nothing. Only the unknowable is fearsome, and nothing need be unknowable to you with the powers and resources that may be yours. Other fears are but figments of the mind, readily banished by the exercise of a trained will. You who bear the Keyblade, before what should you cower? Hesitation is your only foe._  
  
 _Third and finally, knowledge is the greatest key you will ever possess, barring not even the blade you hold. Collect it, husband it, and you will grow in strength unimaginable. Reject it never, in whatever form you find it. It will open the way to all that you most desire._  
  
 _If ever you have a chance who read this letter, seek me out. We may have much to speak on._  
  
 _Farewell, heir to my home._  
  
 _Xehanort_  
 _(Master)_  
  
It wasn’t really a long letter, but as Ven finished reading he felt like he was rising out of deep water. He’d never read anything in Master Xehanort’s writing, certainly never anything like this. It didn’t sound at all the way he would have imagined it.  
  
Vanitas had stopped trying to fight him for the letter after the first paragraph or so. Now he was sitting, quiet and very still, on the edge of the bed. Ven still couldn’t read his face, but he was sure that he didn’t want to.  
  
“This must have been his room,” Vanitas said slowly. His voice seemed like it was waiting for an echo.  
  
Ven looked around at the bed, the desk, the dresser. Even now that he knew, he couldn’t find any sign of the person who’d lived there. If not for the letter, he wouldn’t have said for sure that it had ever been lived in. He wondered if Master Xehanort had taken all his possessions away with him, or if he had never had any, and this room had always been as vacant as the heart of its occupant.  
  
This time when Vanitas reached for the letter, Ven gave it up without resistance. He didn’t want it. It felt tainted, somehow, as though some poison in the words was trying to seep out and consume the room, changing their secret place into Master Xehanort’s possession. The signature felt, he thought madly, like an arcane rune of great dark power, and by finding it they’d set it alight to do its work and couldn’t stop it now, no matter how they tried. That wasn’t possible – he thought. He wasn’t sure.  
  
Vanitas left without another word. Ven let him go in the same silence. He didn’t know what to say to lift the shadow that seemed to have crept over the room and the two of them. He stayed behind after Vanitas had gone, looking around at the familiar yet strange walls, and trying to work out what exactly he was feeling.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Finding Terra was easy. Convincing him that it was a good idea to go chase scattered Unversed up and down the mountain was somewhat less easy, but Vanitas managed it. When he actually asked politely for something, he discovered, the person he was asking was usually surprised enough to agree without thinking too hard about his reasons.  
  
Terra didn’t talk about things. It was one of his better traits. He didn’t ask why Vanitas was suddenly so eager to hunt Unversed, when he usually avoided them. He didn’t comment on how sloppy Vanitas’s form was, or how much harder than usual he was swinging his Keyblade – no wooden sword for once, not for this. He didn’t mention the times when Vanitas opened his mouth to speak but shut it again when he realized that the only sound coming out would be a scream that might never stop. He could feel it inside, where the core of his darkness lived. If the scream got out, so would the darkness, and he wasn’t going to throw a tantrum like a baby, no matter how satisfying it would be in the moment.  
  
The aggravating part was that Vanitas wanted to talk, wanted to tell someone, but he couldn’t get his thoughts in order enough to begin. He couldn’t sort out what he wanted to tell from what he wanted to keep secret, what was important and what wasn’t, let alone why he wanted to talk at all. If he didn’t tell, it might not be real. He should be pushing it away and trying to forget about it.  
  
He couldn’t really hear the paper rustle in his pocket whenever he moved, but it felt like he could. The letter was impossible to forget. There was nothing he could think of that didn’t send his thoughts flying back to it. The words wrapped around his thoughts. He couldn’t outrun them, though he’d tried; every step was another sentence unfurling before his eyes. He couldn’t think of training, or the Master, or the castle, or the Keyblade without thinking of the letter in the next breath. Everything came back to it, and if there was anything that didn’t, he couldn’t get away from the letter long enough to think of it.  
  
He felt like he was going to be sick the way he couldn’t be anymore. He would almost have welcomed it. If he was sick, the tumult of feelings would stop beating themselves against his insides and go away. He hadn’t appreciated the value of feeling hollow when he’d had it. Now he wished for it back.  
  
Vanitas found a certain kind of pleasure in taking out the Unversed. Usually, it bothered him to know that they had been spawned from his emotions and yet he couldn’t feel them anymore, but now it seemed like a gift. He wasn’t striking down his current emotions, but he could pretend. The emotions had always come back, of course. He knew it wouldn’t really fix anything if he could be sick again. But it was nice to dream of being able to cut all these hopelessly confused feelings out of him and destroy them.  
  
Soon, too soon in his reckoning, the Unversed on the mountain were gone, and Terra refused to let them go farther from the castle in search of more. Vanitas could have run off and gone anyway – Terra could never catch him if he didn’t want to be caught – but he ( **wasn’t sure he would get to come bac** k – _was too much of a coward take a little risk_ – **couldn’t shake the feeling that** _his Master, always his Master, the only Master he would ever have_ **was out there waiting for him to do just that** ) didn’t want to kill more Unversed badly enough to bother.  
  
He didn’t want to go back to the castle either, though. He wanted –  
  
Terra sat down on a low wall, patted the seat next to him, and asked the first question of the afternoon. “You okay?”  
  
Vanitas felt like he was cracking in two. The question shouldn’t have mattered. It was a stupid, asinine question, one to which the answer was flagrantly obvious. He wasn’t okay. He wasn’t okay, and he didn’t feel like lying about it.  
  
“What does it look like?” It wasn’t much less than a scream, but he wasn’t spitting fire and shadow, so he counted it as a victory for his self-control.  
  
Terra didn’t look shocked or scared, just sad. Vanitas hadn’t been fooling even him. “What happened? You were fine this morning. Weren’t you?”  
  
The morning already seemed a year away. He thought he’d been normal, even better than normal, back then. It had been a satisfying, if exhausting, session of training and private lesson after that. He had thought it a good day.  
  
He wasn’t sure he could explain. The words weren’t falling into the right order yet. He took out the letter instead and handed it to Terra. Then he swung his legs over the wall and sat facing out over the valley, away from Terra. He didn’t want to see Terra’s face. He felt too much already.  
  
The silence as Terra read wasn’t very silent. Vanitas could practically feel which sentence he was reading by the sound of his breath. The sentences themselves seemed to echo in his ears, reading themselves out in Master Xehanort’s voice.  
  
“Where did you get this?” Terra asked eventually.  
  
It was easier to answer small questions than to explain from the beginning. They put his thoughts in order for him. “I found it. In an old bedroom nobody uses. Ven and I hung out there sometimes.” The past tense crossed his lips thoughtlessly. He couldn’t go back to that room. He couldn’t. ( _He wanted to._ **He didn’t want to; it was ruined now.** ) He didn’t know what he wanted.  
  
Terra reaching over and tugging him closer was a gift. It saved Vanitas from having to admit that he wanted to move. He still couldn’t look at Terra’s face, but the hand on his shoulder reminded him that he wasn’t talking to himself alone. “So this is what upset you?”  
  
Vanitas nodded. He thought ‘upset’ was such a mild word, usually, but right now he did feel upset, like he’d tipped over and everything was swirling around loose and wrong, getting places it didn’t belong. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel.  
  
“I thought he was gone,” he said finally, as part of his thoughts drifted to the surface in whole enough condition to make a sentence. “I thought – he was supposed to be gone, he wasn’t supposed to be here anymore, I was putting him away, but he won’t go – I didn’t want to – he always comes back, he was always here first, anywhere I go he’s ready –” He knew he was rambling, words tumbling over themselves incoherently, but he couldn’t seem to care enough to stop. There wasn’t any place he could stop if he wanted to; the jumble of connected thoughts never ended.  
  
“He’s not here,” said Terra. “Even if he was here, he’s gone, and he won’t come back.” It was a well-meant lie.  
  
“He will. He will, he should, and I – I want him to, I do. I’m a bad pupil, the worst, I should have gone with him, gone to find him, ask him to take me back – he’s my Master, I should – he wanted me, he chose me and I left, I should go back, I want him to take me back – I don’t – I don’t know what I want.”  
  
Terra’s hands were on his shoulders, drawing Vanitas around to face him. He didn’t look up. If he looked up, he wouldn’t be able to keep talking, and then he thought he might choke on all the words. “Don’t say that,” Terra said. “He’s not your Master anymore. He hurt you, Vanitas. You don’t have to go back to him.”  
  
“He’s the only Master I _have_. It’s not – it’s just the way it is.” He wouldn’t choose Master Xehanort, if he had a choice, and that was the worst twist of disloyalty in his stomach. He had no right to turn from a Master who’d chosen him. He couldn’t choose, so he shouldn’t be thinking about the choice he didn’t have.  
  
“Master Eraqus –”  
  
“He’s not _my_ Master,” Vanitas said around a curl of bile. He shouldn’t be saying this, not to Terra, not to anyone, but now that he was talking he couldn’t manage to control which thoughts turned into words. “Not really. I’m just – I’m here, and he won’t throw me out, because – because I don’t know why, but he doesn’t want me.”  
  
“That’s not true!” Terra really believed it. That was almost sweet.  
  
“It _is_. I’m not the student he wants, I’ll always be freakish and dark and not right to him, and maybe he’s right –”  
  
“Vanitas –”  
  
“ – a good pupil would be more loyal, wouldn’t run away – I belong to Master Xehanort, I always will – I’m like him – I should be happy, but I’m not, that’s the worst – I should want to be good, I can’t even do that right –”  
  
“Vanitas!”  
  
Terra’s voice had to be quite loud to cut through the words tumbling over and over through Vanitas’s head. His hands were warm on Vanitas’s shoulders. It was comforting to feel the strength behind them. “Don’t – you don’t have to say that. He _hurt_ you. He’s not your Master, and you don’t have to be like him. You’re here now. It’ll be okay.”  
  
“ _He was here too_.” Somewhat to Vanitas’s own surprise, that was the thing that cracked in his throat. “He was here, that was his room, he had everything, everything I ever had he had first, and he still – I don’t want to be him, Terra, I _don’t_.” It felt like the confession should have burned on his tongue. He’d never said it before, never even let himself think it in so many words. But it was true: he didn’t want to be what his Master was. He thought maybe it had been true for a long time. Possibly it was the reason why he’d never been good enough as a pupil in the first place.  
  
“I know you don’t.”  
  
Vanitas had to look up at that. Terra couldn’t know that. No one could know that. _He_ hadn’t known that until he’d said it. “How?”  
  
For all his seriousness, Terra was smiling a little. It didn’t cover the pity in his eyes, but Vanitas didn’t care. “You’re my friend,” he said simply, as though that explained everything. To him, maybe it did.  
  
To Vanitas, it was just proof that Terra was going to get himself seriously hurt someday, probably by Vanitas. “So? What if I change? You saw – _he_ wrote that – and he still –”  
  
“He was lying,” Terra said.  
  
“What if he wasn’t?” Vanitas demanded. “What if he wasn’t lying? What if he used to be – he belonged here, he got his Mastery here. What if I’m _worse_? What if Master Eraqus is right, and without light I’m just a monster?” He knew better in his mind, but in his heart everything he’d ever been certain of seemed suddenly slanted and unreliable. Maybe the darkness really was good for nothing. Maybe he was just imagining that he was a person.  
  
“You’re not a monster, and you do belong here.” Everything else might be slipping sideways, but Terra refused to budge. “It doesn’t matter what Xehanort did. You’re not him, and you don’t have to become _anything_ you don’t want to.”  
  
In that moment, it was almost easy for Vanitas to believe him. It came a little closer when Terra stood watch as Vanitas lit the letter on fire with Master Eraqus’s method of doing magic and watched it burn down to nothing but ash that the breeze took away.  
  
For the moment, it was enough.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
He’d known it was going to be a bad day from the start. He’d woken up later than usual, after a night of bad dreams he couldn’t remember well enough to dismiss, and then it had been one small annoyance after another. He hadn’t felt like talking to anyone, but Aqua had wanted to talk about their lessons like normal, and it had been less trouble to nod and come up with some kind of answer than to tell her he didn’t want to talk. There was no reason to let his bad mood ruin everyone else’s day, after all.  
  
Terra didn’t say any of this. It wasn’t anything like an excuse. It didn’t matter how frustrated he’d been feeling with the magic that just wouldn’t come as easily to him as it did to Aqua – especially since he knew perfectly well that they just had different talents and there was no shame in that. It didn’t matter, either, that he hadn’t meant it.  
  
Whether or not he’d meant it, the flare of darkness around his Keyblade as it had locked with Aqua’s had come from him.  
  
He hadn’t hurt her; with the darkness behind the motion, he’d thrown Aqua back a little harder than he would have otherwise, but not hard enough that she hadn’t had time to catch herself. Then he’d noticed and forced the darkness back where it belonged, but it didn’t matter. Neither did it matter that he’d won their sparring match fair and square after that.  
  
He stared at his feet as the Master ended their training session, as he always did, with advice for each of them. Terra knew he deserved what was coming, but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear it.  
  
“Terra…you must take more care to give the darkness no opening,” said Master Eraqus. “Though it may seem more aid than danger now, if left alone it will only grow in strength and hazard both. Aqua could have been seriously injured.”  
  
“Yes, Master. I’m sorry, Aqua.” He risked glancing up from his shoes long enough to see her give him a quick smile. She was too good a person to hold a grudge, even though he lost control more often sparring with her than any other time. At least, it felt like he did. Maybe he remembered those times more vividly because of the danger he put her in.  
  
“Darkness will seek any chink, however small, in the wall you build to bar its way. You must be ever on your guard, never more than when you feel your emotions running high. Excess emotion, whether it be anger or fear, will form a channel down which the darkness will flow if you do not make haste to block those channels before they form. Do you understand, Terra?”  
  
It took an effort of will for Terra to meet his Master’s gaze. He knew what expression he would find there, an expression he was far too familiar with. Sure enough, Master Eraqus was looking at him with such disappointment that Terra flinched despite his best attempt at self-control. He was bad at self-control in general. “I understand, Master.”  
  
He’d been slack. It had been so long since he’d lost control that he’d let himself believe that he never would, that the darkness inside him was beaten for good. He’d enjoyed the dream that he’d won once and for all, and he’d stopped being as careful as he should have been. Because of that, he’d disappointed the Master again, this time where Ven and Vanitas could see just how bad a student he really was. He’d hoped, selfishly, that they wouldn’t have to know firsthand. So much for that.  
  
As soon as he could, he left the hall for the courtyard. He liked thinking there, sitting on the central steps. It was easier to keep his feelings from taking control in the calm quiet.  
  
If he concentrated, he could feel his own darkness. He hadn’t concentrated in too long, too taken by the idea that it might not be there to feel. In the back of his mind, he’d known he was pretending, but he’d let himself get away with it. Now he could tell that there was just as much as usual. He pushed it down, away, deeper inside where it couldn’t get to the surface. He had to avoid all the wrong feelings, the ones that led down to where the darkness was. He could get rid of them, if he tried. He knew he could. Master Eraqus believed he could, if he worked at it hard and long enough, so he could do it, and he would do it, whatever it took.  
  
“You shouldn’t listen to him so much.”  
  
Terra jumped, his hard-won calm vanishing. Vanitas was sitting on the end of one of the banisters like a guardian statue.  
  
“What?” he asked stupidly.  
  
“The stuff he says about darkness. You shouldn’t listen so much. He’s got the wrong end of the stick.”  
  
“And _you_ shouldn’t say that. The Master knows better than you do. You’ve only been a student here for a few months.” It was foolish to think he knew better than the Master and rude to say so.  
  
Vanitas scoffed. “Master or not, he’s not likely to ever know darkness the way I do. Or do you disagree? I thought it was a point of pride with him, never to have seen darkness from too close.”  
  
“That’s how he knows,” Terra said. “You can’t really get its measure if it’s part of you, because it taints you, makes you want more of it.” He beat down and suppressed the memory of how not-wrong the darkness had felt flickering over his Keyblade, adding to his strength – no. It was a lie. Any strength it gave him would just hurt the people he cared about in the end, and that was no strength at all.  
  
“That just means _you_ don’t want to listen to me,” said Vanitas. “But that’s too bad, because I’m going to tell you anyway. You’re never going to get anywhere listening to the Master about this, nowhere but sitting on the doorstep _moping_ like you’re lovesick.”  
  
“I’m not moping!” He wasn’t. Moping meant getting lost in feeling sorry for himself, but this was important. He had to go over what he’d done wrong so that he could keep from doing it again.  
  
“You are. You’re moping, and it’s dumb, because it’s not going to get you anywhere. What’re you so scared of?”  
  
“I’m not scared.” That was a lie, really, and it was about time he faced up to it. He tried not to be scared, but he was anyway. “…I could’ve hurt Aqua.” Terra hadn’t hurt anybody with the darkness yet, but he would, one day, if he let it go unchecked. That was the way the darkness worked. Sooner or later, if he couldn’t force it out, he would hurt someone. Hurting Aqua was a terrible enough thought, but if instead it was Ven, or someone even more defenseless… Just thinking of it made a knot of guilt tie itself tight around his throat.  
  
Vanitas laughed, loudly and ridiculously. “You? You couldn’t hurt a fly!”  
  
That was actually sort of reassuring. It hadn’t been a good day. “The darkness could.” And if he let it, through him, then he would be responsible. That much was certain. He had to prevent that, at any cost.  
  
“But it won’t.” Vanitas sounded perfectly confident.  
  
“What makes you so sure?”  
  
He shrugged. “I haven’t, so you won’t. Don’t flatter yourself, Terra: you’re not nearly as unstable and dangerous as I am.”  
  
“You’re not either of those things.”  
  
“Then you’re not either, and neither is the darkness, because the darkness is _me_.”  
  
“You’re more than the darkness,” said Terra. He felt like they’d had this argument before.  
  
This time, however, Vanitas didn’t stomp off when he got angry. Instead, he jumped down from the railing and stood over Terra for better shouting. “I’m a creation of pure darkness that used to leave monsters wherever I went and still can’t get in a friendly fight with the wrong people or else I’ll destroy everything. You –” He shoved Terra in the shoulder for punctuation. “– are the most pointlessly soft person to ever get your hands on a Keyblade. If I’m more than _everything I am_ , then you’re more than one little part of you!” He snarled wordlessly at Terra’s confused expression. Terra was sure there was a flaw in the logic somewhere, though he couldn’t quite see where.  
  
Vanitas continued, “Of all the things I hate about you, and there’s a long list, what I hate _most_ is that you keep telling me I’m not doomed forever by something I can’t help and didn’t ask for, but you won’t think to apply the same rules to yourself! You swallow everything the Master says as long as it’s about you, but you tell me the opposite when it’s about me! _I hate that_!”  
  
He stopped, breathing sharply. Terra didn’t know what to say. Vanitas couldn’t be right, because – well, he just couldn’t. He was a good kid underneath, anyone could see that. His darkness was different, somehow, or he was better at suppressing it. He said, “It’s not like that.”  
  
“Fine,” said Vanitas. “Believe what you want. But ‘you don’t have to become anything you don’t want to’ applies to you as well, got it?”  
  
That was hard to argue with, even more than the rest, so Terra didn’t try. Instead he nodded. “Got it,” he said, though he suspected that he didn’t. But he definitely didn’t want Vanitas to keep yelling at him. It felt wrong, reversed somehow, though Vanitas had done his share of yelling before. But that had been different in a way Terra couldn’t quite define. This was strange, but better.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Sitting in one of his secret hiding places wasn’t perfect as a pastime, but it was better than nothing, better by far than going back to the room that he’d thought of as his but had never really belonged to him at all. He didn’t want to go back there, and spending all his free time in his bedroom made him feel like he was a prisoner still, so it was off to his secret corners instead, trying one after the other and doing his inadequate best to not think about the room he wanted to be in.  
  
This room, at least, had no surprises waiting. He’d checked every inch, practically taking the furniture to pieces, before settling in on an overstuffed couch. It might be an overreaction, but Vanitas didn’t care. He’d had enough letters. He’d been jealous at one point, he remembered, of the letters and presents Aqua got. That would teach him to want things.  
  
This room, with its fortress of old furniture, wasn’t much of a sanctuary: there wasn’t enough in it to keep his mind off the other room. He tried to focus on the book he was supposed to be reading, but he couldn’t seem to manage, even though this version of magical theory was not only helpful but downright legible. He’d gotten used to the sunlight and the breeze while he read, to having something to do other than read if he got bored.  
  
In time, he would be able to go back to that side of the house and sit in the tree again. It was a hideout that had been compromised, that was all. Vanitas would just have to treat it like one. Once anyone who was nosing around had gotten bored of finding nothing and left, he could go back.  
  
That plan would probably work better, he suspected, if he weren’t the only person nosing around. Master Xehanort was gone from there forever. Vanitas knew that. He wasn’t about to go to the trouble of sneaking back into the castle uninvited just to go see if someone had found his stupid letter after all the years it must have been since he’d hidden it there.  
  
That wasn’t particularly reassuring as a thought, since it just led Vanitas’s mind into ways and reasons Master Xehanort might sneak into the castle. His hiding places helped there, at least. It made him feel marginally safer to know that absolutely no one knew where he was or would think to look for him in the right place.  
  
He munched morosely on a biscuit. This batch hadn’t come out quite right, thanks to the oven’s occasionally malicious behavior, but they were good enough to box up and tuck under the skirt of a particularly ridiculous-looking chair for snacking on when he felt like it. He didn’t keep food in all of his corners; he’d gotten out of the habit when he’d stopped using them much, and now he didn’t feel the need. Having a stash in his bedroom and whichever hiding spot he was currently using was enough. Besides, having four – three and a half, really; the Master didn’t hover around the kitchen when he was cooking the way the others did – other people eager to devour anything he cooked made getting his hands on that much extra food more effort than it was worth. He was debating chasing them away with a broom the next time they got it into their heads that it was okay to eat whatever he wasn’t looking directly at without permission. Terra had gone so far as to steal the mixing bowl. There would be a reckoning.  
  
Vanitas realized that he’d been staring at the same sentence for five minutes without actually reading it at about the same time that the door opened and Ven came in.  
  
This really was an excellent room for hiding in; Ven didn’t notice that Vanitas was even there until he sat up. Then again, that might just be Ven. “Oh! Um, hi.”  
  
“Boo,” said Vanitas drily. He didn’t set out to surprise people, at least not all the time. It just happened, because none of them ever looked behind them. Or, in Ven’s case, in front of them. If he took to walking around with his eyes closed, it might actually make him harder to sneak up on. “I guess that means you didn’t want something.”  
  
“I’m bored,” he complained. Vanitas was less than sympathetic. Boredom was a standing problem and not one to whine about. He conveniently ignored the fact that he had just been whining, albeit internally, on the same subject. “And you’re never around anymore. Are you still mad about that letter?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vanitas lied flagrantly. “I’m not mad about anything just because I’m not always at your beck and call.”  
  
“You never were at my beck and call.” Ven paused. “What’s a beck?” Vanitas shrugged. He’d never thought about the meaning of the word. “Anyway, I never went in this room before, and I was wondering what was in it.”  
  
“Well, now you know,” said Vanitas. He expected Ven to leave, as there was certainly nothing noteworthy in the room, but he sat down on one of the oddly-shaped tables and started kicking his legs against the furniture. Vanitas went back to his book. His attention didn’t get any more willing to fix itself on the words, but he tried harder. He bit into a biscuit angrily.  
  
“Can I have one?”  
  
He looked up. Ven was watching his biscuit vanish with an aggressively wistful expression, one Vanitas recognized from the inside as the one most likely to cajole scraps out of vulnerable shopkeepers. Apparently it was instinctive.  
  
He took a certain pleasure in taking the next bite with more enthusiasm than it really warranted. “They’re mine,” he said around the mouthful.  
  
“Just one?” Ven was making Vanitas hungry just looking at him. It was ridiculous, since he knew for a fact that Ven had eaten a hearty meal only a few hours before and would eat another soon enough, but he felt faintly guilty all the same.  
  
It was just because that used to be his face when he’d really been hungry, he told himself. He wasn’t going soft. “Catch.”  
  
The sound of Ven wolfing the food made an interesting accompaniment to the next paragraph. He didn’t go away after that, but Vanitas contrived to ignore him, mostly. He’d gotten used to reading around Ven while sitting in the tree; a certain amount of background noise didn’t bother him. He chose not to think too hard about how he didn’t feel nervous with someone else in his hiding place.  
  
He was pulled back out of the book just when he’d managed to keep his mind on what he was reading by a combination clatter and thump.  
  
“Ow,” Ven said.  
  
He looked up. Ven was sprawled on the floor in between two ugly chairs. “What are you doing?”  
  
“I’m mountain climbing!” Ven said with enthusiasm. Vanitas hoped his expression conveyed the total lack of indoor mountains. “No, see, the furniture is the mountains, but if I hit the floor I fell, and I have to start over again.”  
  
Vanitas looked at his book. He’d read _most_ of what he was supposed to, and he wasn’t really having any luck concentrating on it…  
  
He put the book down and clambered up onto his feet on the couch. “I bet I can get every single piece of furniture without falling once.”  
  
“You’re on!”  
  
The ensuing pandemonium was entirely worth it. No one would miss the broken end table. It wasn’t like anyone but Vanitas ever came in here anyway, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
After three days of rain and gloom, the sun finally burst out of the clouds, setting all the windows aflame with color. Looking out, Aqua saw that the light inside was nothing by comparison with the brilliance outside. It would be a shame, she thought, not to get the most out of this perfect day.  
  
“Can we have a picnic for lunch?” she asked that morning.  
  
As expected, Terra lit up at the thought. “Can we, Master? Please?”  
  
Ven, however, frowned. “What’s a picnic?”  
  
“You’ve never – it’s when you go outside to eat, because the weather’s so nice.” Aqua turned her most beseeching look on Master Eraqus. “We have to show Ven. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”  
  
She was probably getting too old for that look to work, but Master Eraqus smiled and nodded anyway. “I suppose you’ve all earned a bit of a treat. After your lesson is over, you may go outside for lunch.”  
  
It felt like that morning’s training would never end. The sunlight sparkled through the stained glass of the windows, and all Aqua wanted was to be out there in the sun herself. She doubted that she would remember anything she was supposed to be learning. At least everyone else was just as bad.  
  
Deputizing Terra to find the picnic basket and blankets, Aqua fairly flew down to the kitchen as soon as the Master, despairing of getting anything better out of them, let them all go. As fast as she was, however, Vanitas was faster: when she jumped over the threshold into the kitchen, he was already there, rummaging in the cupboards.  
  
“What food is best for a picnic?” he demanded without looking up.  
  
“Sandwiches!” said Aqua. “Lots and lots of different sandwiches, and fresh fruit, and lemonade, and cookies, and anything else you want! We always had potato salad at home.”  
  
“Well, we don’t have it here,” said Vanitas with finality. “If you’d told me yesterday, I would’ve found a recipe, but it’s too late now, unless it uses raw potatoes somehow.”  
  
“I didn’t _know_ yesterday! I thought it was going to be rainy again.” She wasn’t particularly bothered by the absence of potato salad; there were bound to be plenty of other good things to eat. Vanitas liked making more than all of them together could possibly eat at once, and it took a while to get through the leftovers when he found a new recipe he liked.  
  
“That’s not my problem. What kind of fruit is good? And what _is_ this thing? It’s huge! It’s taking up all my space.”  
  
Aqua looked over his shoulder. It was just what she was hoping for. “It’s a watermelon, silly! They’re meant to be huge.”  
  
“…What do you do with it?”  
  
“You eat it!” That would mean one of the big knives to cut slices off with. Aqua went in search of one. This was difficult, as Vanitas seemed to have spent one of the rainy days rearranging the contents of all the drawers.  
  
“Yes, I got that, thanks, but how?”  
  
Victorious, Aqua returned, knife in hand, to inspecting the watermelon. “Just as it is. You cut it into slices and eat them. You’ll like it. Where are the long rolls? Those are best for these sandwiches.”  
  
“What kind of sandwiches?” Vanitas asked. “Or are we just bringing all the things out? I don’t remember who likes what, and I don’t care.”  
  
“That’s a good idea. Then we can make whatever sandwiches we want. Are there any tomatoes? Bring one. I like tomato on mine.”  
  
“That’s weird,” said Vanitas, but he added the tomato to the growing pile of sandwich ingredients on the counter anyway. “Someone has to eat the last of the mutton, though, before it goes to waste.”  
  
“On a _sandwich_?” Aqua made a face. “Can’t you put it in a stew or something tonight?”  
  
“That’s boring. But if you insist, I’ll find something to do with it. Maybe I’ll put it on your pillow while you sleep. Is there anything still in the cookie jar?”  
  
“Plenty!” Considering the amount of baking Vanitas had been doing, Aqua doubted they could finish everything in a week, no matter how hungry they got. It was too bad, in a way, that he baked more than he cooked proper meals when he was in a bad mood. It made her feel guilty to look forward to the times when he baked three different things in the course of a single day and then refused to have anything to do with dinner. Still, after the fact it was nice to have tasty treats around. The cookie jar was turning into more of a cookie cupboard.  
  
“Bring it. And…lemonade, huh? You’re by the sugar; get it down.”  
  
Aqua did. At least that was still where it ought to be. “Don’t make it as sweet as you want it, or else make two, please.” Vanitas and Ven would happily drink juice so thick with sugar that it was practically syrup, but the rest of them liked their lemonade to still taste mostly of lemon.  
  
“If you’re so picky, come over here and give me a hand with one of them.”  
  
It was a task on its own to fit everything they wanted to bring out into the picnic basket when Terra duly unearthed it. Aqua was sure that they hadn’t had this problem before. Food for five people instead of three did make a difference, but did it make this much of one? They gave up eventually on trying to find a way to put the lemonade in so it wouldn’t spill. Vanitas carried the two carafes instead. There was never any question of fitting the watermelon into the basket. Weighing it and the full basket against each other, Aqua took the watermelon and shoved the picnic basket in Terra’s general direction.  
  
“I could carry both,” he said.  
  
Aqua glared at him. “I’ve got this.” She wasn’t sure that she did: the round fruit was harder to hold than she’d expected. With a great deal of surreptitious juggling, she managed to keep hold of it until they made it out onto the grass where Ven and Master Eraqus were waiting for them. Then there was no need to worry about anything except getting the last pickle before Ven stole it from under her nose.  
  
Finishing the last bite of her sandwich, Aqua leaned back happily on the picnic blanket. Around her, the grass gleamed in the sunlight. There could be no purer green anywhere, she thought, than this, so vivid and alive. Ahead of her, the castle gleamed likewise. It looked cleaner than it usually did, the whiteness of its walls smoother and the colors brighter. It looked like the castle was glowing from deep within. Aqua felt rather like she was glowing too.  
  
Ven munched on his sixth cookie – or possibly his seventh; Aqua had lost count. “This was a really good idea, Aqua,” he said.  
  
“Why, thank you!” She felt extremely pleased with herself, the weather, and everything in the world.  
  
“We’re not done yet,” said Terra. “We haven’t had any watermelon.”  
  
“That’s true. Are you sure you can eat any, or will you explode?” Aqua teased him.  
  
“I won’t, but if you swallow any seeds again, _you_ will.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“If you swallow a watermelon seed, a watermelon grows in your stomach until it explodes,” Terra told Ven with a bad attempt at seriousness.  
  
“That’s not true!” Ven said. “Is it?”  
  
“It’s true,” Aqua said when he looked to her for support. Not smiling was an effort, but she mostly managed.  
  
Part of her missed the days when Ven would have believed her without question. Most of her didn’t. She would have felt bad telling him such outrageous lies then. As it was, he caught on when her sober expression slipped and glared at her and Terra. “You guys are the worst! I almost believed you!”  
  
“That’s not _their_ fault,” said Vanitas lazily. He was lying on the blanket, staring up at the sky with what served, on his face, for a broad smile. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. Everyone knows you don’t explode unless the watermelon farmers don’t get there in time to cut the fruit out of you. Another one always grows back, though. Always and always.”  
  
“That’s disgusting!” said Aqua, giggling.  
  
“You’re horrible,” Ven agreed.  
  
“I know,” said Vanitas happily. “So what _is_ the big deal about this thing that’s worth risking stomach-explosion over?”  
  
“You’ll see,” said Terra, digging the knife out from under the heaps of empty wrapping in the basket. He offered it and the watermelon to Master Eraqus with some ceremony.  
  
One day, Aqua was going to get to cut the watermelon. Admittedly, she might possibly give herself the biggest slice if she did, and the ensuing fight might possibly be the reason the Master was always the one to cut the slices. Equal sizes of watermelon slice were important, more important even than equal slices of cake.  
  
“Don’t swallow the seeds. Spit them out,” she warned Ven and Vanitas before taking her first bite. There was nothing in the world quite like the cool, sweet taste.  
  
Vanitas spat a seed into his hand. “What’s so great about a fruit that’s full of seeds you can’t eat?”  
  
Aqua swallowed. “This!” She spat the seed from that bite with precision into Vanitas’s face. It hit his cheek and slid down like a tear until he brushed it hastily away.  
  
“Did you just – you _did_. This is war, Aqua. Prepare to suffer!”  
  
She rolled to her feet and ran, taking another bite for more ammunition as Vanitas chased after her. This was the reason why equal slices were so important. For the sake of fairness, it was vitally important that everyone’s slice be the same size and have about the same number of seeds.  
  
There was no way to make it fair that Vanitas didn’t know how to spit a watermelon seed properly, but he learned quickly. Besides, he was just the first casualty. Aqua had an archnemesis to vanquish.  
  
She didn’t see it, but she felt the seed hit her in the side of the head. Terra smirked when she turned to look at him and spat another three seeds at her, rapid-fire. She dodged. “I’ll get you yet!” she declared.  
  
“Come and try,” Terra replied.  
  
By the time the battle was over (in an inconclusive armistice, when they all ran out of seeds and Master Eraqus refused to cut any more slices on the grounds that they would be sick), Aqua was sticky with watermelon and breathless with laughter. It was a good combination. She flopped down on the grass along with the others. The sun was warm, and she’d eaten enough to be pleasantly sleepy. Beside her, Terra began instructing Ven and Vanitas in how to make grass whistles. The Master watched over them all from his seat on a bench, smiling a little.  
  
They belonged together, Aqua thought peacefully. They really did. She was incredibly lucky to have two families like this.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
“Vanitas, I wish to speak with you.”  
  
If there were any more nerve-wracking sentence in any language, Vanitas couldn’t think of one. Coming from Master Eraqus, it only became more so. Anyone else might have something unimportant to say, or at least something Vanitas could only pretend to listen to, but the Master didn’t, in general, want to talk to Vanitas, so anything he brought up was bound to be important. And anything the Master considered important was, just because he was the one considering it, far too important for Vanitas to get away with ignoring.  
  
He swallowed. “Yes, Master?”  
  
Through the closed bedroom door, it was next to impossible to read the Master’s voice, let alone his face. “Feel free to clean up what you were doing first. We will speak in my study in five minutes.”  
  
“Yes, Master.” There was no way it wasn’t very important indeed. Anything ordinary, even if he were in ordinary trouble, could be settled just as well where they were. The Master only called people to his study when he wanted to discuss something serious and formal.  
  
Thinking back hastily, Vanitas couldn’t recall doing anything bad enough to get him in _that_ much trouble. He wasn’t having a fight with anyone, nor had he broken anything important. He hadn’t lost control of the darkness in more than a week, not even where the Master couldn’t see. If he’d broken any rule, it wasn’t one he’d ever been told.  
  
He fumbled his study materials together and dropped them on the desk. That was as cleaned up as he felt capable of getting them at the moment. He couldn’t remember where they belonged more specifically with his mind racing in a dozen different directions. It didn’t matter. Not much mattered besides having to go talk to the Master.  
  
He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t said anything, either, at least not anything particularly memorable. Maybe the Master had been keeping track of the little things he’d said all this time, and he was finally going to be held to account for his disrespect. That made sense, more or less, though it left his stomach rolling. When no punishment had seemed forthcoming, he’d been much freer with his tongue than he should have been to or about a Master. He must have accumulated a vast number of offenses over the months. He couldn’t think of any single punishment severe enough to cover them all, but maybe Master Eraqus was ( **kind** ) soft enough that each one counted for less than he thought. It was still going to hurt. Even if each counted for only the smallest punishment, so many all at once could hardly fail to be heavy.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t that, Vanitas thought with a desperate attempt at optimism. Maybe the Master truly didn’t care enough to punish his impertinence so long after the fact. Maybe he was calling Vanitas in for some other reason, like because –  
  
He was going to send Vanitas away. The thought hit like a hammer, powerful enough that he stopped moving and put his hand to the corridor wall while he tried to breathe around the impact. The Master was going to send him away.  
  
It was the only thing that made perfect sense. He’d had his chance, and because he’d gotten too comfortable, hadn’t shut up and toed the line like a good little charity case, hadn’t been grateful enough, the Master had decided that he wasn’t worth it. He was too dangerous, after all. He’d messed up somehow – there was something he should have been doing that he wasn’t, because no one had ever told him he was supposed to, or he was just not repudiating the darkness the way the Master wanted him to. Never mind that he couldn’t if he tried, that the darkness was everything he had, that nothing he saw in light appealed to him more strongly, that he hadn’t done anyone any harm since he’d been connected to Terra.  
  
That could be it, too: the Master thought he was influencing Terra, adding to his darkness, or making him less afraid of it than the Master wanted Terra to be. He’d always known this could happen. Terra was the real student, practically the Master’s son. If Vanitas got in the way of Terra becoming what the Master wanted him to be, Vanitas would be the one to go. He’d just thought it wouldn’t happen unless he actually tried.  
  
Or maybe it was because of Ven and the chi-blade. Maybe the Master had decided that it was too much of a risk having them near each other, in case they got angry enough at each other to fight over something. They hadn’t, not since the first time; they just yelled instead, but maybe he was worried that one day that wouldn’t be enough. There, too, the choice was obvious: Ven was the light one, while Vanitas was the ‘monster’. Ven had been taken as a real student right away. Vanitas was the one who didn’t belong.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t any of those things. Maybe it wasn’t something he’d really done at all. Maybe the Master just thought he’d done something, or was going to do something. Vanitas couldn’t help but think of a letter now nothing but a memory. Maybe the Master knew of it somehow, or guessed, or could put the same pieces together on his own.  
  
He wondered if a Master knew how to take people’s Keyblades away, the way they could pass them on.  
  
He wondered, also, as his feet brought him ever closer to the Master’s study, what he was going to do about it. He couldn’t fight, not and live for more than seconds. He was better than he had been the last time he’d made a similar determination, but the Master knew him better now too. Maybe he could run. That wouldn’t make any difference if he was just being thrown out of the castle, but if the Master wanted to take his Keyblade away, he would have to run. Without a Keyblade, he wouldn’t have any choice at all about what would become of him.  
  
He didn’t want to run, though. He wanted to fight, no matter how little chance he had. He wanted to fight back. The Master had let him stay all this time, let him believe that he was going to get to stay as long as he wanted, and all the time – it had to be all the time, for Vanitas hadn’t done anything special recently – he’d been working up to getting rid of him.  
  
Vanitas was partly to blame too, he knew. He’d started going soft too. He’d thought that if nothing bad happened immediately, it meant that nothing ever would. He’d started getting too comfortable in a thousand little ways. He’d _trusted_ that it wasn’t just an elaborate setup, that if things seemed to be going well it meant that they really were, that he would hear if he was close to wearing out his welcome before it happened. He’d been stupid and let his stupid feelings loose worse than he ever had when they’d been Unversed, and now he was paying for it.  
  
He could get through this, he reminded himself. He was tough. He could survive anything. He’d survived being discarded before. He was going to go make a life for himself where no one owned him. He was older now, and stronger; he could do it. He didn’t need a Master.  
  
If he had time, he might leave a letter of his own: _Never get complacent about your welcome. There’s always another kid with the potential._  
  
His feet knew the castle as well as his mind did: without him telling them to particularly, they brought him to the Master’s study while he thought. He looked at the door. It was just a door, no matter how forbidding his mind was making it. It was time to face facts. He wasn’t going to let the Master see if it hurt. It didn’t hurt. He wouldn’t let it hurt.  
  
Vanitas squared his shoulders, wiped all trace of emotion from his face, and knocked at the door. At the Master’s muffled, “Enter,” he opened it and stepped into the room.  
  
The Master was waiting, standing at the window behind his desk. Vanitas left the door open in case he did end up needing to run and stood at attention, just this once. Let the Master see that he was worthy, even now that it was too late.  
  
“You wanted to see me, Master?” He kept his voice as even and polite as he could. Shouting before he had anything to shout at would do him no good. The Master was not to know that Vanitas cared. He could deny him that much.  
  
“I did.” He turned from the window. At least he was going to look Vanitas in the face while he took everything away. “Vanitas, answer me this question: what does the Keyblade mean to you?”  
  
Surprised by the unexpected and irrelevant question, he answered before he thought. “It’s a part of me. It came from my heart when I needed to defend myself. It’s my power.” Finally hearing the words coming out of his mouth, he added defiantly, “You can’t take it away from me.”  
  
The Master’s eyes widened briefly. Somewhere inside Vanitas, a fear released its hold. He hadn’t been thinking of that; he couldn’t do it, then, or wasn’t planning to. “Take it – No. No power can take away a Keyblade once bestowed. It is, as you say, a part of your heart. Its life is your life.”  
  
 _Ven had taken it away,_ part of Vanitas whispered, but he dismissed the thought. Ven’s Keyblade used to be theirs, the same way Ven’s heart used to be theirs, and now both were Ven’s. Vanitas had his own, better ones.  
  
“I realized, recently, that there are some questions I never asked of you, which may have been remiss of me,” the Master went on. “With your patience, however, I will ask them now. You have been here for some time, studying alongside pupils pursuing the rank of Keyblade Master. Is that also your desire?”  
  
“I – _what_?” It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. That wasn’t a question the Master would ask him before throwing him out. It wasn’t a question he’d imagined ever being asked. Besides, “What does it matter?” He said the words as he thought them, bitter and sharp and incredibly impertinent. By the time he realized that they weren’t just in his head, it was too late to take them back.  
  
The Master didn’t look angry, Vanitas noticed vaguely. He looked – Vanitas wasn’t sure quite how he looked. Pitying, perhaps, though the Master never pitied him. “Your goals should always matter to you. Have you never even considered it?”  
  
Once he’d begun speaking his mind, there was no reason not to continue. He could only be kicked out once. “There’s no point considering what I can’t have.”  
  
He’d wanted to be a Master like Master Xehanort, before, powerful beyond compare, but it had seldom been spoken of, and never after that day. He’d been nothing but a means to the chi-blade all the time, and what might happen after it was achieved was far more absorbing to Master Xehanort than a mere pupil’s fitness for Mastery. And since then…Master Xehanort was the only one who had ever offered, ever made anything that might possibly be construed as an offer. His only chance at that kind of strength, that kind of security, had been lost forever in his flight from the badlands.  
  
If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought the Master had been struck. His voice, when he spoke, was gentler than Vanitas had ever heard it. “Vanitas…Is this what you truly believe?”  
  
“It’s true. And what’s it to you? _You’re_ not my Master.” Honesty scraped the inside of his throat coming out, but it was less painful than pretending any longer.  
  
“No,” said the Master laboriously, moving around his desk, closer to Vanitas. “I have not been a Master to you. I have avoided making the same commitment to you that I have made to my other students. I wronged you, as is clear to me, but now I would set this right. Would you, Vanitas, accept the rank of full apprentice here?”  
  
Now Vanitas was the one who felt like he’d been struck, or possibly the reverse: he felt like he’d been drawn up to face a blow and received an embrace instead. His vision shivered as if in a heat haze, and he thought he might faint.  
  
It was only shock, which passed quickly enough. When he could remember how to make his lungs work, he said, thinly, “Is this a joke?”  
  
“No joke and no trick. I would lead you on the road to Mastery, if such is your wish.”  
  
There were a thousand reasons why this had to be a lie. Vanitas grabbed one at random. “But – but you hate the darkness!”  
  
The Master sighed and bowed his head. “This is true. It is also true that I resisted your presence here as such, though the darkness was not of your choosing. That was my failing, that I did not distinguish between the perpetrator of a crime and the victim. For that I owe you an apology.” A hint of a smile crossed his face. “Even Masters may falter at times. It is a lesson that must often be relearned.”  
  
As his thoughts started to settle into a more organized pattern, Vanitas managed to pull himself together and stop gaping like a stunned ox. Masters could change their minds, he knew; he had seen it happen, occasionally not even to his detriment. It was possible, he supposed, that he had been sufficiently well behaved as a student on sufferance to convince the Master that he would continue behaving well in the future. In that case, though, what would happen if and when he didn’t? It would be worse by far, he was sure, to have had it all dangled in front of him and then snatched away again. He didn’t want it as a bribe – no, that was a lie: he did want it as a bribe, as anything at all as long as he could have it; he just couldn’t stand it as a bribe. He would tear himself to pieces before letting another Master have the complete shaping of him, and there was unlikely to be anything left to split off this time.  
  
He had to ask now, before choosing. “What happens to me if I don’t want it?”  
  
“There are teachers of great skill who can be found to train you in any discipline, should you choose to pursue a different path. You will be welcome at this castle as a member of the household for as long as you may wish.”  
  
It was an almost unimaginably generous offer on its own, one that sounded very much as though Master Eraqus truly meant both parts: if he was willing to send Vanitas out into the worlds to grow stronger any way he wanted, Keyblade and all, if he thought Vanitas was safe enough to let go, then he might really think Vanitas safe enough to keep. Departure was not entirely unappealing: somewhere else, he could be the strongest person around, the one no one else dared to attack, and completely free to control every part of his own life. He could adventure throughout all the worlds and see everything there was to see.  
  
It was a tempting dream, but nothing more. Going to learn elsewhere would mean finding another Master, not of the Keyblade but of something else. Anyone with the ability to teach him would also be able to control him. Privately, Vanitas could admit that the thought of having another Master, someone he didn’t know at all, frightened him. He’d been impossibly lucky once; he couldn’t realistically hope to be that lucky again.  
  
He could handle it if he wasn’t, of course. He’d been on his own for most of his life. But if he didn’t have to, if he could stay here, where he felt safe more often than he didn’t, where the Master never hit him outside of training, where he knew all the rules and secret places already, that would be better. Even continuing to not quite belong here was better than starting over with nothing somewhere else.  
  
For the first time in months, Vanitas unfolded the dream he’d been carrying in his heart from that first moment when the Keyblade had come to his hand and he’d heard what it could mean, and he looked at it. In this dream, he was strong, too strong to ever be hurt again. He knew things that other people didn’t know, and they respected him for it. And curled up in the corner of the dream like a last crumb caught in a napkin was a thought that had seemed wild even at the time: he wasn’t alone. There were other people like him, and they would look out for him. It wasn’t stupid and pointless to stick his neck out for them, because they would do the same for him.  
  
He’d thought dreams didn’t come true for people like him. Maybe he’d thought wrong. They didn’t fall into his lap, but if he worked for them, if he _made_ them come true, then maybe…  
  
He looked Master Eraqus directly in the eyes, for the first time completely without fear. “I’d like to stay,” he said.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
The ceremony was not particularly complicated. It had always been an afterthought, both when Eraqus had taken his first students and before, when he had become a student himself. The choosing of students was done, in his experience, on the spur of the moment, when a brightly gleaming heart stood out among any number of fellows and proclaimed its destiny. The Keyblade knew its own. The only ceremony that truly mattered followed at once, or close enough as to make no difference. Once the Master knew, and the student knew, that the power had been passed, they were teacher and student thenceforth. The later ceremony served as an announcement to the student’s community, if one was needed, but he had never thought it truly necessary. Aqua had participated in the ritual apprenticeship ceremony, but neither Terra nor Ventus had. Eraqus had not seen the need.  
  
He had never before had cause to contemplate a situation in which the two connections, between Master and inheritor and teacher and student, were not inextricably and immediately bound together. Ventus had passed from Xehanort’s hands directly to his, and due to his condition had been in the eyes of all Eraqus’s apprentice for some time before he had been in any state to perform or care about ceremony.  
  
For Vanitas, there was a ceremony. He had earned that much. What had been delayed should not also be hidden. The other children might not make much of a crowd, but they cared enough for ten times their number, and Vanitas deserved to have them present for this acknowledgement of his status.  
  
Vanitas stood alone before the dais, Keyblade in hand. He was tense, Eraqus could see, and how, almost too late, he understood why. Xehanort would one day be called to account for all, and not least of the charges would be the betrayal of a student’s trust, so thorough as to destroy that vital bond when it was most needed.  
  
It could be mended, still. Of that much he was sure.  
  
“Chosen of the Keyblade, on this day and in this place I name you my apprentice. Your life and growth are in my keeping, and I will cherish them. In exchange, I give my honor into your keeping. May our charges ever reflect one another. Do you accept this apprenticeship?”  
  
“I accept.”  
  
Eraqus held his Keyblade out to Vanitas, hilt first, which gesture was – cautiously, even now – reciprocated. For the drawing of a breath, they exchanged Keyblades. Eraqus could feel Vanitas’s heart beating in the blade, and though it was darkness, he felt no distaste for it, nor did Vanitas appear to take any harm by the light in Eraqus’s blade. It was as well, for he was now past the point of retracting his words, whatever he might have felt. Then the Keyblades were banished, and nothing remained but memory.  
  
That was all the ritual, but Eraqus had added one step more. He took from his pocket a small charm of blued steel. From the widening of Vanitas’s eyes, he knew he had chosen right. With infinite care, he affixed his symbol to the front of Vanitas’s jacket.  
  
As soon as he removed his own hands, Vanitas curled one hand over the charm, as if to check that it was real or protect it from being stolen. His fellow students – truly his fellows now – crowded around him to congratulate him, and Vanitas smiled, such a broad, whole-hearted smile as Eraqus had never seen cross his face before. Eraqus added two extra words to the one extra gesture.  
  
“Welcome home.”


End file.
